


Fly Me Back Home

by nerdlordholocron



Series: peacock; albatross; phoenix [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It, Further characters to be added as they appear, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Temporary Character Death, gods and magical nonsense, spoilers now run through 2.37, very long road trips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-06-28 05:18:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 36,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15700566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdlordholocron/pseuds/nerdlordholocron
Summary: Mollymauk Tealeaf has died, and it hasn’t gone according to anyone’s idea of how that’s supposed to work— his own, his friends’, or the gods’. After receiving a third and final chance at life because of the extenuating circumstances that surround his entire existence, he begins the journey back to find his friends in their travels.





	1. Fancy Meeting You Here

**Author's Note:**

> This is it, this is the Long One this fandom is getting out of me. I’m basing it in part on whatever route the M9 will be taking going forward, so its overall direction is uncertain, but I intend to keep it going at least up until I can reach a reunion point, and then likely into a questline that carries in from some of the stuff Molly’s seen along the way.
> 
> Warnings will be added as they come up; all I really see coming is some canon-typical violence, but there’s none in there yet.

_When dark strikes you down, rise again._  
_Our foe relents not; rise again._  
_Til battle is won, rise again._

_The ground will not take you, decay will not touch you, no magic enthrall you, for here with my stone and my staff and my song and my word and my will and my blood I do bind you: whenever you fall, rise again._

"So mote it be," say the woman in the robe and the one on the ground in unison.

She brings the blade down.

 

* * *

 

This is not how it’s supposed to go.

He’s pretty sure, anyway. Mollymauk Tealeaf would be the first to admit that he doesn’t know shit, but every story he’s managed to hear about death in the past two years goes roughly to same tune: there are places for if you’re bad or for if you’re good, and probably someone or other with wings picks you up so the Raven Queen can sort you into which one you ought to go to.

He’s fairly sure he never saw any guide with wings, and he’s also decently positive that “stuck in a doorless, windowless room with somebody you never wanted to much less figured it was possible to see” isn’t one of the places he’s ever heard described. Sure, it could be one of the bad ones, but mostly he’s heard about fire and the implication that as a tiefling he ought to get back to it as far as those ones are concerned. But no, he’s in a box. Maybe ten feet to each side? The walls, ceiling, and floor are all some sort of polished stone, a red so dark it’s nearly black. There’s light, but no discernible source. No exits, no entrances, no furnishings, nothing.

Except for the motherfucker in the corner opposite him.

As soon as Molly has finished taking it all in, he turns on his heel, retreats as far into his own corner as he can, screws his eyes shut, and jams his hands over his ears. Maybe if he ignores it, or better yet complains about it, it will go away. “Moonweaver,” he says aloud, “I’m well aware I’ve been something of an asshole, but I did try to not be _that_ bad so if you could just—“

“I don’t think she can hear you here,” says the room’s other occupant, loud enough that Molly gives up on covering his ears and drags his hands down his face in consternation. It’s his own voice, with someone else’s cadence and accent. It’s surreal as fuck and he doesn’t want to hear it, but the bastard keeps going. “I’m afraid we’re stuck here.”

Molly throws up his hands in despairing frustration and turns around, takes in the sight of the stranger with his face. The other tiefling in the room has no piercings, no jewelry in his horns, no tattoos save for the red eyes that Molly could never manage to ink over. Not as many scars, but not by a huge margin; despite his dark, functional clothing his collar is open to show them, to access the skin to bleed. His hair is cropped very short, and the set to his face is strange— less hardened ruthlessness and ill intent than Molly had imagined, more determination of a young firebrand who’s convinced he’s in the right. The barest trace of regret, that it didn’t work.

He doesn’t look any less dangerous.

“And why is it that we’re stuck here?” Molly asks finally, when he figures he can no longer get away with silence. “If I have to put up with you, least you could do is tell me that much.”

Lucien shrugs at Molly’s hostility. “Certainly, if you want to hear it. It’s a long story, but, well, we have all the time in the world.”

 

* * *

 

“Have you ever heard of the Claret Orders?”

Molly shakes his head. He’s sitting on the floor, hunched forward, arms around his knees; Lucien sits opposite him, cross-legged. They don’t seem to be able to get tired here, but it had seemed like the right thing to do to sit down. “Do I want to know?”

Lucien opens his mouth to question the logic of asking that after demanding an explanation, then thinks better of it and plows onward. “They’re largely a secret, so you probably haven’t heard, but it’s not as bad as whatever you’re thinking. They were founded to protect Wildemount from the undead. It was bad enough in those days that the founder turned to the Raven Queen for blood magic, just for the strength to solve the problem. To save people, at whatever price.”

Molly narrows his eyes. “That wasn't your group, though, was it? You were with something called the Tomb Takers. Your friend Cree mentioned that much.”

Lucien nods, and something flickers across his face at the mention of Cree— Molly’s not sure what. “My friends and I had become a splinter faction. We thought the Orders had grown too ineffective, too devoted to internal politics and too slow to act in the face of some of the darkness rising. Which was true enough, but splitting off on our own was a mistake. We wanted to take more risks, act more directly. We... became foolish about it.”

“Figured that out, have you?” Molly isn’t sure he believes a word Lucien says about these noble goals. He doesn’t seem to be able to use magic to draw out the truth here, so he’s settling for taking jabs. "So what did your friends kill you for? Is that why we're here?"

Lucien nods. “The short version is this. We wanted to be stronger so we could take more risks. We were few, and death was a constant risk. I discovered a new source of power, stronger than the blood magic, and began to develop it. Some time after, an associate approached me with knowledge of a ritual, and I thought it would be our breakthrough.” He frowns. “I’m not sure if she lied or she just didn’t know, to be honest. What she told me was that the ritual would allow me to pass through death, and in doing so, reach the knowledge and level of control that we needed to become powerful enough to deal with threats the Orders would never challenge.” He gestures to Molly. “What it actually does, apparently, is revive the body repeatedly. Not as an undead; we had strong precautions against that. But despite that, as far as I can tell, the soul doesn’t go back. I’ve been trapped here ever since she killed me for the ritual, to what end I don’t know. I don’t know what you are, honestly— an echo of me, perhaps— but unfortunately, I think you’ll be trapped here too.”

Horror dawns over Molly, crowding out even the wild resentment at being called a mere echo. “So some other poor bastard is going to crawl out of a grave with my body and my scars and my tattoos, and not know a damn thing about who they are or where they came from? All over again?” A whole new empty person. Fuck. He takes back anything he said about learning about his old life being the nightmare. Going through that again— making someone else go through that, whichever— that’s the nightmare. Fuck. He regrets asking. He regrets asking more than he has ever regretted anything in his life. Can you have a nervous breakdown when you’re dead? Apparently you can.

“I can’t know for sure,” Lucien replies. “But knowing that this has happened both times my body died now, it seems likely that it would function the same way again.”

Molly drops his face onto his knees. “And when they die, they’ll be trapped here too. Why? What’s going to happen? What did you— no, you don’t even really know what you did! You absolute—” He flops over backwards and throws his arms out, staring at the ceiling, tail lashing back and forth in agitation. “And I’m stuck here until the end of time. Can I just go mad now, and save myself the wait?”

“I haven’t managed to yet,” Lucien replies, seriously enough. “Believe me, at this point I’d rather the ritual had simply failed. I don’t know what the true end of the spell is, but it can’t be anything good. The only thing for which I can think of it being used is for some sort of powerful necromancy, lichdom perhaps, or—”  He cuts himself off. "At any rate, being used to fuel something like that after dedicating myself to fighting the undead is... well, the worst kind of ironic, really.”

“All right, can you stop telling me these things now? I would really prefer it if you would stop telling me these things now.”

Lucien sighs. “I was hoping we might pool our knowledge to try and find a way out.”

Molly laughs, and there’s no humor in it, only panic. He’s stuck here. He’s stuck here he’s stuck here he’s stuck here and even if this Lucien idiot is maybe not as downright evil as he’d always assumed, he’s insufferable and determined to tell Molly everything he doesn’t want to know about himself and his new predicament. “Knowledge, ha! Good luck! You’re the one that knows things, me, I’m— I was just a bullshitter, trying to see the world and keep my friends safe. I don’t know anything about the undead, or about magic beyond the instincts you left me, so if you’re hoping I’ve got an idea...”

“I see.” Lucien’s voice has gone pensive, though Molly still refuses to sit up and look at him again. None of this ought to be real, he ought to be off snarking at the Raven Queen’s guides or something, why is this happening. “Who were you?” Lucien asks after a moment. “I should have asked, before any of this. I got caught up in what it meant that you were here, what that meant for getting out of here, but... you’ve only just died, and all I’ve offered is a history lesson and a lot of speculation that would be troubling to anyone more normal than me.”

“Define ‘more normal than you’,” Molly gripes. The question’s short-circuited his panic a little, but it quickly begins to come back. Lucien wants to know about him? Why? What’s he going to... ah, hell. There probably isn't anything he can actually do with the knowledge. There really is probably not anything worse than the current situation, he’s already dead and his afterlife is a boring red box that is probably going to slowly start filling with strangers with his face, and the first one is kind of a dick. He sighs, and sits up, still looking anywhere but at Lucien. “Or don’t, actually. Name’s Mollymauk. I woke up in your grave. I got found by a traveling carnival, and they looked after me, cause I didn’t know anything. Stayed with ‘em the better part of two years, told stories, read fortunes. They were my family, and they made people smile. Sometimes they also made people mad, so I got into some fights, and figured out my blood did weird shit.

“Then one day the whole thing fell apart, and me and my best friend wound up tagging along with a different bunch of weirdos. And then some asshole slavers up Shady Creek Run took some of them, and I died trying to get ‘em back. That’s pretty much it.” He sighs. “I hope they made it. Gods, I hope Yasha’s all right.” He looks at the walls, at his boots, anywhere but at the foreign rendition of his own face wearing an awful look of pity. “Never did figure out who you were. Didn’t want to know, figured that anyone who made their blood do that sort of thing on purpose and got buried in the woods in the middle of nowhere probably wasn’t anyone I ever wanted to meet.”

Lucien shrugs. “Not an unfair assessment. I can’t deny I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but... I always intended to help others. I hope that can set your mind at ease a little.” He pauses. "It sounds like your intent was the same, in your own way."

Molly answers with a hard stare. Near as he can tell, Lucien isn’t bullshitting him. Which is no guarantee that he’s not the kind of person to really fuck things up for the “greater good”— in fact, the fact that he is is terribly obvious, and he’s still an ass besides. But if he was at least trying to do good, somehow, through fucked-up means... maybe that helps a little?

...It's still only a small comfort for being stuck in a box with him for all eternity, though. “Assuming it does,” Molly says finally, “what ideas were you having about finding a way out?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm kind of rolling with the assumption that Lucien was kind of a driven shithead who at least partly thought he was doing the right thing-- the description I've got of the original Blood Hunter orders from the book gives me a very Grey Warden vibe, and with that comes a hefty dose of "we're trying to save people, but we'll resort to sketchy as hell things to do it." I did have to rework a little bit of my original Lucien concept after that brief exchange with Cree in today's episode, but not too badly.
> 
> 10/8: This chapter has been updated slightly to match some new backstory theories.


	2. Talking In Circles

Lucien has been going on and on and on about magic for probably days. Molly really doesn’t know, there’s no day or night in here, no hunger or thirst or fatigue, only red stone and the duty-driven hunter who sort of accidentally created him. On top of it, Molly doesn’t know shit about magic, he still doesn't trust Lucien, and he can’t pay attention to any of this crap worth beans. So he’s sat there, swapping rings between different fingers, shuffling his cards (apparently you keep the contents of your pockets in the afterlife, or something, he’s not really sure why he has them but he’s not going to complain), and saying “hmm” and “sure” at approximately the right times. It’s not that he’s not interested in the slim hope of getting out— to the real afterlife or to life again, he’s not fussy at this point— but he just really, really doesn’t know what's going on. And he’s kind of getting tired of it.

“Am I being a good toy duck?” Molly asks at one point.

Lucien trails off another tangent about necromancy or something, wearing a perplexed expression. “A what?”

“Did a show in a town with one of the big Academy branches once,” Molly explains. “Lot of students in the audience. While we were bringing them in I heard one of them talking about how sometimes one of the professors would just borrow a student to listen to him while he explained what he was trying with a spell, to try to figure out why it wasn’t working by talking through the different parts of the formula, and if he couldn’t get a student he’d just talk to a toy duck instead, worked just about as well. I think that’s basically what I’m acting as right now. Is it working?”

Lucien scratches at the base of one of his horns. “Not really,” he admits. “Why a duck, exactly?”

Molly shrugs. “Hell if I know. Either because it was there, or because it was silly, is my guess. Academics are weird.”

“You’ve talked to many of them?”

“Not really, more just in the one town. And Ca— my friend, he could do some magic, but he was never too keen on explaining the extent of his knowledge.” Molly’s tail thuds restlessly on the floor. Every time he comes back to thinking of his friends, he has to worry about how they’re doing. Whether they’re free.

Whether they’re alive, since he wouldn’t know if they’d crossed over or not, here.

“You wanna hear a story about that town, though, I could use a break, I’ll tell it to you,” he says, with forced cheer. When he’s spinning a tale, he can forget where he is for a moment, get all caught up in it— even if he doesn’t really want to focus in on the audience too much this time. “Picked up a couple good ones.”

“All right. Maybe something will jog my memory.”

“I don’t know about that, but it ought to be good for a laugh, at least. Apparently in the spring they have a festival, and there’s this spell you can cast that surrounds you with this big indestructible orb, and they’ve got this great huge hill...”

 

* * *

 

“What were your friends like?” Lucien has worn out another attempt at a theory, and is looking at Molly thoughtfully again. He does that a lot, it seems like. Molly can’t shake the thought that Lucien is trying to figure out what exactly Molly is, whose soul he is really. He’s steadfastly ignoring that line of questioning, himself.

“Bunch of assholes,” Molly offers by way of response. He... still wants to keep them for his own, really. He’s already got to share part of his damn face with Lucien, and any knowledge that might be useful. “Bunch of really fantastic assholes. What about yours, your Tomb Takers, they all as intense and driven as you? Anyone with a sense of humor?”

“ _I_ have a—“ Lucien sighs. “Yes. To both. They were more loyal than I ever deserved, really. We were all young and stupid, a fool and the fools who followed him. Most of us had lost someone to an attack— we wanted to prevent others from suffering the same. We were practically family, since most of us didn’t have many left.”

Molly can’t help but think of the circus, and of the Nein. Gustav, nearly lost. Yasha, Jester, Fjord, maybe lost, and it still gnaws at him that he can’t know. “Who did you lose?” he asks quietly.

“My sister. We were on the road, and there was some sort of ghoul...” Lucien looks younger than Molly’s ever seen himself in the mirror— which makes sense, he thinks distantly, but it’s still something of a gutpunch to see. Molly stays silent, thinks of Yasha, thinks of Jester. Of an older girl with a matching face and horns, only imagined, not remembered. Of taking the blade for Beau. Shit.

Molly shakes his head, as though to clear it, and Lucien mirrors the action, shaking off unwanted thoughts of his own. “So when I got older, and learned how to fight, I wanted to... prevent that, I suppose. I had nothing else to do, nothing else in me except a cause. I was... empty, really, until I found the Orders.”

Empty.

Good gods.

“I’m sorry,” Molly says, and tries to deliver the condolence without having a panic attack all over it. “I... I get it, I think.” Here he is with all the evidence he needs that he was never Lucien— they’re coexisting in the same space, for crying out loud— and he’s never felt more unsure. He pulls his coat tight around him, runs his fingers over the tattoo on his wrist.

And besides, Lucien frankly looks miserable, and gods, it’s uncomfortable to see that on your own face. It's well past time to change the subject. “That thing you mentioned earlier, that one abjuration. I just had a thought. Could you re-explain that one?”

 

* * *

 

“So, uh...” Molly fidgets, his tail tapping restlessly on the ground behind him.

“Yes?” Lucien’s been lost in thought for a bit now, but he looks up when prompted.

“What else could you do? With the weird blood shit, I mean. Not going to lie, it scared the daylights out of me anytime I figured out something new with it.”

“Well, which abilities had you figured out on your own?”

“The swords thing, and the blinding thing. Got to admit the removing poison was pretty handy.” Molly doesn’t admit that the second thing he tried with that one was to cure drunkenness.

“That’s most of it, actually,” Lucien replies. “The Hunter’s Bane makes it easier for you to track undead, too, even sense what things an evil creature has touched once you’ve been taking it for long enough. And there’s magic to hold a creature in place, though it’s more difficult than the others.”

Molly sighs. “Would sure have come in handy if I’d known that one.”

Lucien’s gaze goes distant. “I suppose. I wonder what would have happened if you remembered the rest…”

“I dunno, I try not to.”

 

* * *

 

“How did you meet Cree?”

Honestly, Molly’s surprised it’s taken Lucien this long to ask. “Entirely by accident,” he replies. “My friends wanted to bust some crime boss, but then when we got in to do it we realized we were in way over our heads. Wound up taking a job for him so he wouldn’t get all suspicious and kill us. At least it was just cleaning up monsters. Anyway, Cree was working for him. Took our blood as insurance to keep us from selling him out. She asked me a whole lot about the ritual and the plan, and I panicked and gave her a load of bullshit.”

“She bought it?”

“Hey, I’m convincing!”

Lucien frowns. “I suppose she did think you were me...”

“She certainly seemed pretty happy to see me. You.”

“I’d expect so. Did she mention the others?”

Molly scratches at the base of one of his horns. “She said the others were all gone to ground elsewhere. Is that a usual thing for you blood hunter types, the hanging out with the Myriad?”

“For the Orders, no. For the Tomb Takers... we took what help we could get. And the criminal underworld have always got their finger on the pulse of what’s going on, where the trouble might be.”

Molly snorts. “Was that a joke, just then? With the pulse and all?”

Lucien rolls his eyes, which comes as a surprise— it’s the sort of thing Molly’d do. “It wasn’t intended to be.”

“I mean, you did claim to have a sense of humor.”

“I— fair enough.”

And so it goes, for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rubber duck debugging is a real thing in programming, and I’m a real fan of treating wizard magic as programmable to some extent, so why not rubber duck debug magic?
> 
> Also it existence is just inherently funny to me, so there’s that. Could have named it for anything, but we went for a rubber duck.
> 
> 10/8: Some minor edits for clarity and new backstory theories.


	3. Divine Intervention

They keep going back and forth, Lucien theorizing, Molly telling stories, both dancing around questions they still don’t want to ask, and dodging out on questions they don’t want to answer. Neither of them has any idea how long it’s been. Molly gathers that Lucien hadn’t even been sure that it had been two years when he arrived, until he’d said so. He kind of has to wonder how long it’s going to be before the next version shows up, or until some kind of horrible dark magic kicks in, or both.

In the end, it’s neither.

He’s in the middle of another story about the carnival when it happens— he still hasn’t told any about the Nein yet, it’s too fresh, and for some reason he still doesn’t want to share them. No, this is safe, early carnival stuff, after his voice and before Yasha, complete nonsense to pass the time.

“So I’m thinking, all right, what’s the worst that could happen, and then I realize that my sleeve’s caught fire— what the hell’s that?“

Something’s moving. Something brown-grey, shot through with green— the root of a plant, maybe? has begun to poke through the top of one of the walls, and is slowly creeping further down the wall.

“You ever see anything like that in here before?” Molly asks, trying to keep the shake out of his voice as he points. He has no idea whether this is good or bad.

Lucien turns and looks. “No." A flicker of what could almost be panic flits across his face, before a more studious frown replaces it . “Whatever it is, I don’t think it has anything to do with undeath.”

“What, you can just tell?”

“So can you, I thought. It’s part of the magic the Hunter’s Bane gives you, it’s in your blood.”

“Last I checked I was dead and didn’t have any.”

Lucien shakes his head, exasperated. “Regardless, it’s the most natural-looking thing I’ve seen in here.”

They watch the root wind down the wall, a few more breaking through and following. There’s a voice, faint, nearly inaudible. Molly hisses in a breath. “What was that?”

“I think it said, _‘Something will be here.’_ ”

“That’s not ominous at all.”

Molly’s tail twitches anxiously as he watches the root creep further, and another break through. Natural or not, he has to wonder what this thing is going to do. He’s already dead, what more can it do? But it’s worrying all the same, instinctively, and his hands reach for swords he hasn’t got. Lucien stands still, watching calmly.

“Wait a moment.” Lucien holds up a hand. As more roots break through, he furrows his brow. “There’s more, do you hear it?”

The walls are cracking, Molly can hear that much, but beyond that— voices. Terrible, low, distant.

Fuck it. Molly reaches out towards one of the roots that's getting closer to the floor, and gives it a careful poke. It feels like an ordinary plant. Then he backs up a few steps, and takes a running jump, grabbing onto the root and climbing up to hang on up at the top, where the cracks in the wall are widest.

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to have a listen. Shh." Molly inspects one of the cracks, satisfies himself that another root isn't about to come through and hit him in the head, and leans an ear towards the crack. Sure enough, he can hear the voices from outside.

“I have often met you at the border, yet you do not often venture into my realm.” The voice is like a bell rung in a mausoleum, terrible and final. The question it carries is implicit.

The replying voice is equally terrible, but it carries the howl of the wolf, the roar of the lion, the scream of the hawk all in it, not the depths of the tomb. “My servant inadvertently brought my attention to an affront to both our domains. You know him; he is not your servant, but he is friendly to you. I came to get rid of what he brought my attention to.”

“Show me this offense against nature and death, then.”

Molly can’t see anything beyond the walls, but there’s a terrible sensation of being stared at, stared through. And then, another voice, higher, lighter, wild but more carefree, like streams, like silver, like chimes: “Don’t go too hard on them, now.”

The first voice sounds almost startled, almost peeved. “And what are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know how I am, I go where I will. A passing traveler told me something of interest was going on, so I came to see. And what do I find, but one of mine, and one of yours, stuck in a predicament of neither’s design? Oh, don’t worry, I won’t interfere with your duty. I’m just here to witness, and to send my love.” The feeling of being stared at intensifies. “Goodness, that is a mess, though, isn’t it?”

The roots halt. The walls begin to shake. Molly loses his grip and lands in a heap on the floor. “What did you hear?” Lucien hisses as he tries to scramble to his feet.

“I don’t know, gods, probably,” Molly whispers back, agitated. “Very vague, very powerful, we’re fucked, that sort of thing.”

“We’re already dead.”

“Yep! And that hasn’t made it any more difficult for me to panic.” The walls shake harder, the roots speeding up and lashing through, and a chunk of the ceiling falls in. Molly flattens himself into a corner, in desperate hope of not being crushed.

“Stop.” The grave-voice rings forth again, fully audible now. “I wish to know what it was. Leave me something to examine.” A pause. “My Champion. There are wayward souls to tend to.”

A fourth voice speaks, this one masculine and strikingly normal by contrast to the other three, only the hint of a rush of feathers behind it. “All right. I’ll get ‘em out.”

And a moment later, a person drops in through the new hole in the ceiling, a young man of some elven descent, dark-haired, dark-cloaked. “Hey there,” he says as he stands up from his landing. “Oh, wow, twins, huh? Look, I imagine you’re aware that you’re in kind of a— situation, so good news, that’s over. Bad news, if you didn’t know it, uh, you’re dead, but I promise it’s better than whatever you thought this was.”

“I think we’d figured that out,” Molly replies. “And we’re not twins, by the way. Who the hell are you?”

“What’s going on?” Lucien chimes in.

“Just... come with me, you’ll get your explanations,” the stranger says. He steps forward and takes Lucien’s elbow, then reaches out for Molly’s.

The walls vanish.

In their place, blank grey nothingness in all directions— wait, no, there’s a stone box off in the distance, and from the outside, Molly can see the mass of plants that wreathe its sides. That must be where they were trapped. But that’s not important. The three figures ahead are what’s important.

Lucien drops to his knees. Molly stays on his feet, feeling at once ready to bolt and unable to move. The half-elf’s hand comes up to give him a comforting clap on the shoulder. “Easy, buddy.”

Before him stand gods.

In the center stands a cold, dark swirl of robes and feathers in a porcelain mask, not cracked and stained like Nott’s, but immaculate and blank. She gazes coldly over him, pitiless and calm. He’s been through death, maybe even twice; now he meets Death.

Beside the Raven Queen stands a huge woman, clothed only in a tangle of plant life of every kind and a cascade of wild hair streaked in black and brown and amber. Her eyes change shape constantly, tiger’s to eagle’s to deer’s. The Wildmother’s stare is intense, and angry. There is a balance and a cycle in Her care, and both are currently broken. She seethes with all the fury of nature.

And off to the other side, one more. From where Molly stands, She’s got to be shorter than he is. From where he stands, She could take up the whole sky. Her figure is slight, draped in woven moonlight and stars and cloud, and She’s glowing faintly from Her feet to the tips of Her long, blue ears. The Moonweaver is smiling gently, and She’s the first to address them, all bells and silver light. “Well, let’s see if we can’t get you sorted out, shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at Clay, hel...ping...? (Alternately, uh, how about that Deuces Ex Machina? Except hey, he did cast that.)
> 
> Anyway, here we are, the jig is up and gods only know what will happen next. (Well, and me, I've got the next bit mostly written.) I'll try to have the next bit up tomorrow after work, if all goes well.


	4. Interlude: Decompose

A woman hunches over a desk, seated in what has become less of a study and more of a lair dug into piles and drifts of books and dust. Her finely made robes are faded and rumpled, belted with a simple sash with a plain red stone hanging from it. She brushes her lank hair aside as a lock falls onto the page before her as she takes notes upon notes upon notes.

The ritual’s primary purpose failed. No matter; the insurance she had built into it will still be of use to her. She will get it right next time. Two further years of study have ensured this; with the war brewing, she’ll have any number of factions to recruit a test subject from this time. She is almost finished.

A spelled alarm pings in her mind, reminds her that for now, at least, she must yet eat to keep alive. She turns aside from her work, gets up stiffly.

As she leaves the study, she doesn’t notice the tiny green shoot that emerges from the stone on her belt. It grows, sprouting leaves, roots strangling the stone, pulverizing it.

The stone is ground to dust, and the sapling that emerged from it falls to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's this douchebag?


	5. Potential and Paths

“You have made a dire transgression.”

The Raven Queen’s voice was terrible enough before, but with this much cold anger in it, it’s even worse. Molly wasn’t afraid to die, before. But now he has no idea what the hell She’s going to do, and that? That is terrifying.

Beside him, the guide keeps a hand on Molly’s shoulder. His face, at least, is readable; the brief glance he gives Molly is sympathetic, but when his eyes return to his god, his expression is grim.

“You claimed my service, but you have broken my every commandment,” She continues. “You gave your allegiance to the worst of the betrayers while still using my name. And you have attempted to break through the Gate— an act that, if completed, would bring about cataclysm beyond what you could ever imagine. It is not my role to punish, but you. Have. Tried. Me.” The words fall like nails in a coffin, one by one.

“ _He_ hasn’t, though,” the Moonweaver adds conversationally, and nods towards Molly.

The Raven Queen ignores the other goddess. “Have you anything to say for yourself?”

“That’s not what I was after,” Lucien begins falteringly. He doesn’t look up from the ground. “We wanted to end the threat. To make undeath impossible.”

“And you would succeed in that where your god had failed?”

Lucien visibly cringes. “I... Forgive me my arrogance. I was a fool. I strayed in my pursuit of your work.”

Molly would feel bad, if he weren’t busy being scared out of his mind and alarmed at the hubris being described on top of it. He’d figured Lucien had been holding back, but this is beyond a bit much.

There’s dead silence for a moment, then the Queen’s terrible voice rings forth again, final, final, final.

“Neither is it my role to forgive.”

Molly had thought the Queen had been looking at both of them, but as She turns Her gaze on him he quickly realizes otherwise. Her expressionless stare pierces through him, like an icy gale through his very bones. “You are the same soul, and yet you have done none of this,” She says. The icy anger is gone, but the scrutiny, the hint of curiosity is almost as bad. “I do not know how this came to be.”

“Is he really, though?” The Moonweaver tosses Her hair. “A blank slate, a second chance. I’d say he’s made himself someone else entirely.”

“Was this your doing?” The Queen gives the Moonweaver a hard look.

The Moonweaver grins. “Not at all,” She replies. “Perhaps I watched one who was unknowing of a trick of fate awaken, one night, but no more. I didn't wake him up. You can hardly fault me for keeping my own customs.” She shrugs. “I don’t know how one soul became two, either, but that’s hardly my wheelhouse. You’d have to take that up with Ioun. But more to the point, that one’s dedicated to me. Whatever you’re planning with the first one, the second one goes to my domain.”

The Raven Queen... sighs? Yes, that would seem to be it. “Well enough. That is the order of things.”

“It is, that. Although...” The Moonweaver’s smile widens. “I wonder.” She says something more to the Queen, something that Molly can’t quite understand. The Wildmother, seething silently at the Raven Queen’s side until now, roars into the discussion, and an argument breaks out.

Molly’s still standing frozen, at this point. Terror at whatever the Raven Queen is going to do has blended into awe that the Moonweaver is actually here and speaking for him, and all in all he’s basically got no idea what to do or think about any of it. Lucien is still on his hands and knees, shaking silently. Between them, the guide looks from goddess to goddess. “Whooee,” he says quietly under the clash of divine voices, “what did you do?”

This brings Molly back to himself, at least a little. “Haven’t the slightest idea,” he says, trying and utterly failing to keep his voice airy.

“It was not because I thought She could not,” Lucien says through gritted teeth on the guide’s other side. He makes no move to get up. “It was because she _would_ not.  If she had answered, I would not have needed to seek other allies.”

The guide shakes his head. “I don’t think you understand quite how the gods work,” he says. He glances to the Queen for a moment, purses his lips, nods. “But I think you’re pretty much sorted for now anyway. You’re a bit more of a question,” he says to Molly.

“Why’s that?”

“Beats me,” says the guide. “Hadn’t you noticed, you can only understand them when they want you to?”

Sure enough, the quarrel between the gods is still booming overhead, and not a word of it is understandable. “Do you know what they’re arguing about?”

“Nope. They don’t want me understanding right now either, apparently.”

“But you’re... wait, aren't you one of them?”

The guide shakes his head. “Nah, man. I’m just some asshole. Well, no, that’s not really accurate anymore. Name’s Vax. I _used_ to just be some asshole, but a lot happened, and now I’m one of the Queen’s guides. One of her Champions.”

“Ah.” That doesn’t explain much to Molly, really. “Any idea what that whole ‘same soul’ business was about?”

Vax shrugs. “I mean, not really? Best I can guess, maybe you were both made from the same... potential, or something, I guess, but it sounds like you took it in completely different directions.” He glances at Lucien, wordless on the blank ground. “Results may have varied.”

Molly almost manages a smile. For one, Vax is probably the most likeable person he’s met so far since dying, not counting the Moonweaver since She’s a goddess, but for two, it’s... something of a relief, really, to know that the best guesses in the business are pretty sure he’s himself, and not some transgressing idiot. The worst Vax has assumed he is so far is Lucien’s sibling.

"A failure and a fool," Lucien says bitterly, and only now does he get up. With the Queen's attention off him, he's regaining some defiance. "Waste of potential, either way."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Vax responds lightly. "Lot of good a fool can do."

Molly's about to go for a comeback of his own, but loses the thought entirely as the Wildmother roars forth again, apparently no longer caring who can understand Her. “We cannot interfere with a living creature,” She snarls. “I will not twist my servant’s gift of passage to kill without reason, simply because it alerted me to something we did not understand.”

“That creature is just as likely to be undead, or a plaything of the leviathan,” the Raven Queen retorts. “Is that not reason enough?”

“I think whether he is or isn’t is rather up to what we choose to do about it,” the Moonweaver supplies. “Melora will do what she will, as well you know. Knowing that, the choice to take that chance is yours, is it not? I can only offer my counsel, and it seems to me there’s one easy way to prevent both of those things.”

The Raven Queen’s voice is flat, exasperated. “I do not deal in second and third chances.”

The Moonweaver glances towards Molly, or perhaps toward Vax, who raises an eyebrow. “Is that so?” She says. “But you’ll have no truck with the soulless either, so I thought, and none of us want the leviathan fed. I’m a fan of second chances, myself.”

“What are they going on about?” Lucien hisses to Vax.

“Don’t worry about it,” Vax replies, a little shortly.

The Queen shakes Her head, a brief, curt gesture. She turns to Molly. “Your body yet lives,” She says flatly. “We have undone what strange magic my erstwhile subject has put in place, but it seems to have done part of its work already. You have a choice. Move on to your goddess’ domain, or forfeit my gifts of blood that have been so misused and twisted, and return to the living.”

Molly can’t believe what he’s hearing. “What. You’re saying I—”

Neither can Lucien, apparently. “My Queen, that was my—“

“SILENCE.” And indeed silence falls like a stone, as soon as the word leaves the Queen’s mouth. “You have done your damage. This is your fault. You answer to me, Lucien Martel, and you have much to answer for.” She looks back to Molly. “Your choice.”

Molly’s mind sort of, not really, almost starts working again. “I’d rather live, of course,” he says, everything coming out in a rush. “Take your blood magic, I never asked for it, though I mean I am grateful for the use it’s been in protecting my friends, but I’d give it up in a heartbeat, I need to make sure they’re all right.” He ducks his head gratefully towards the Moonweaver, who beams at him. “And there’s a lot more out there I’d like to see, if you’re giving me the chance.”

“I’d hoped you would,” the Moonweaver says, still smiling. “See, Matron, we can make the best of a bad situation.”

“It will take truly extraordinary circumstances for me to do this again, Sehanine Moonweaver,” the Queen replies. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”

“I usually am.”

The Queen steps forward, and suddenly She’s right in front of Molly, the size of a human, scant inches taller than he is. But the feeling of Her presence is only more intense. “Do not attempt to learn this magic again,” She says, and presses an ice-cold finger to his forehead. He shivers as a wave of utter void and chill courses through him, and Vax gives his shoulder a squeeze as the Queen fades back into Her faraway appearance. “Vax’ildan, I ask that you see him back. I will deal with the one that belongs to my domain.

“Thank you,” Molly says fervently. “Moonweaver, I promise, I’ll make the most of it, and— I won’t forget this. Don’t worry about the magic, I swear I won’t do anything with it, I— thank you.”

“Go free and find your way,” the goddess tells him gently. “Your joy is my joy.” She glances at the Queen once more. “And for now, I’ll trespass no more.” Just like that, She is gone.

The Wildmother fixes Her gaze on Molly. “If you meet a pale firbolg who serves me, tell him he has done well,” She instructs, voice quieter now, gentler. “I must bring news of this corruption of magic to the others,” She tells the Queen. “I take my leave.” And then She, too, is gone from the Raven Queen’s domain.

With only the Queen left, Vax steers Molly away, the goddess and the indignant, despairing shade of Lucien fading off into the darkness as they walk. “Don’t know how, but it seems you’ve gotten lucky,” he says. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen circumstances that have gotten someone sent back on their own.”

“If I say I can’t believe it, will that make it not happen?” Molly asks shakily. "Because it's... all a bit much, but I definitely want it to happen."

“Belief doesn’t have much to do with it now,” Vax replies. “It's just how it's going to go, unless you decide you don't want it. Look, just as a warning, this isn’t going to be easy. You’ve been dead for days now, and I don’t know what magic is working on your body but you’re probably not going to be in great shape when you wake up. And, well, coming here and going back changes you.”

“I sort of thought it might. Is there really— I’ll still be the same person, right? Same body, all that?”

“For the most part. Same soul, same body, worse for wear. The magic you apparently had will be gone, though.”

Molly looks down at the scars covering his chest. “I’m not really sure I can get too upset about that.”

“You won’t remember all this,” Vax adds. “You’ll keep bits of it, you’ll know you died and why your magic’s gone and all, but a lot of it is going to be a blur. Better for you that way, really.”

“I can live with that.”

“That’s the spirit.” Vax faces Molly, grips him by both shoulders. “Ready to get back to living?”

“Absolutely. Though...” Molly tries to look back towards where he thinks they walked from, where Lucien might have been standing. “What’s going to happen to him? What did he do?”

“I don’t know. But if he was trying to mess with the Divine Gate, or bypass it, or whatever that leviathan business was... She’s not lying, she’s not really a punisher, but that kind of thing could end the world, no matter how lovely the intention behind it. That’s got to have consequences.” Vax shakes his head, making the beads in his hair click together. “Glad I don’t have to be there when the Wildmother tells the rest of the gods about it. Whoever else was working with him on that will be trouble. But for now, what you need to worry about is living.” He examines Molly for a moment, then smirks and pokes him playfully on the nose. There’s another brief wave of cold through Molly, much subtler. “That should help. Take care of yourself, all right? If you wind up back here again, it’ll probably be for good.”

Molly shivers. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good. Off you go.”

 

* * *

 

And then suddenly Molly is somewhere else. He can’t see, he can’t breathe, he can’t _breathe_ —

Fuck, they buried him. Dirt weighs down above, kept off his face by something soft, but nevertheless crushing. He struggles to move, hands pushing at the fabric around him. He’s not going to die like this, damn it.

He punches a hand through the gap in the tapestry, feels soil and roots— not too packed, loose enough that after a moment’s scrabbling, he hits cold air. He flails more of the dirt aside, both arms out now, he can see light, he’s got his face clear— he sits up, gasping, and the cold stings his lungs like knives, his clothes are sodden and torn and his muscles are weak from disuse, but he pulls his legs out, stretches out on the ground— he’s alive.

The full moon shines down on the barren fields around him, on the small bright flowers that poke up through the blanket of snow over the grave. He sits up and marvels. It’s like nothing he’s ever seen before, and he throws back his head and laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those curious, I have in fact considered what I would do mechanically as far as reclass goes with Molly losing his blood magic. I debated a bit about whether to actually do that, but given that the Raven Queen is the one that gave its secrets to the original blood hunter orders to begin with, I do think she wouldn't be terribly happy with its misuse, and while the blood hunter class is really fun to play with I'd also like to explore a bit of how Molly might deal with not having to wonder so much about where his freakyass powers are coming from, and having that tie to the unwanted past severed.
> 
> I don't know for sure what city Lucien was trying to reach when Cree mentioned what he was after in e31, but if it involved dying, it probably would've fucked SOMEthing way up if he'd succeeded. Bypassing the Divine Gate in order to learn more powerful knowledge seems up that alley to me.
> 
> 10/8 update: Per e37 spoilers, it seems Lucien was involved in even crazier shit than we thought. I've made some edits accordingly, though the main impact on the story won't be felt until later.


	6. Long Road Ahead

In death, Molly’s mind had been clear, but there had been no sense to his body beyond the movement of limbs, and then only for convention’s sake, really.

In life, everything hurts and nothing makes sense.

Well, not everything. He takes stock of his situation. The night is bitterly cold, and his clothes offer little protection. He’s hungry enough that he’d probably eat whatever Nott might hand him, if she were here. His chest aches, despite the way the magic knit flesh and bone back together, barely leaving a scar. His head is also killing him.

Looking around, he sees his coat hanging from a nearby pole. Slowly, checking himself over for further injuries, he gets up and makes his way to it, drags it down and pulls it on. It’s not warm, hanging out here in the freezing wind, but it’s dry, at least. He leans against the pole to rest a moment.

Something crinkles as he moves, and he reaches into his pocket to find a note. It’s written in what he recognizes as Caleb’s precise hand.

_“If you do not remember: Your name is Mollymauk Tealeaf. You are friends with a group called the Mighty Nein, and you were traveling with us when you died. The rest of us survived the battle, but we did not win._

_If you are able, make your way to the city of Zadash, to a tavern called the Evening Nip. Tell the bartender that you have many gifts, and he will bring you to our employer, who is called the Gentleman. He should be able to direct you to us._

_I am sorry, Mollymauk. We could not do enough._

_C. W.”_

The weight of it all hits Molly hard, and he slides down to sit on the ground again, back to the pole. He pulls his knees up to his chest and shakes, breath hitching as a sob wells up. They're not here, but they survived, at least that far. They left him a note. They wanted him to know who he was. They wanted him back. They left him a way back to them, even knowing that he might not know them... they wanted him back. He’d never expected that much. He's beginning to feel the terror of being alone out here, but they want him back, _they want him back_ — it’s a conflicting jumble of emotions, and he’s torn between not knowing what to do in the present and desperately wanting to get back to his friends as soon as possible. He just doesn’t know how he’ll manage it.

Eventually the wanting wins out, and he uncurls a bit. _Well_ , he thinks, resolve strengthening again, _he’s just going to have to get back, then_.

As he moves to stand up his hand brushes against something else: a card, at the base of the pole. The Moon, he sees when he picks it up, and he grins through the drying tears, tucks it into his pocket. His pocket, which does not contain the rest of his deck. Huh.

He checks the rest of his things, finds his coin missing, and the better of his swords, and the Periapt of Wound Closure from around his neck. He hopes they’re making good use of them. At least he’s still got the means to defend himself.

It’s cold, and he’s hungry, and there’s no shelter to be found. He fishes the tapestry he’d been wrapped in out of the hole and shakes out as much dirt as he can. It's not optimal, but he can wrap it around as an extra layer over his coat, keep out a bit more of the chill. His recent memory is fuzzy, remembering only snippets of goddesses and a guide who helped him return, and of meeting his body’s previous inhabitant— a thought that is no longer as terrifying as it once was, for some reason. And before that, the fight, and the trek, only snippets of them, but he thinks there was an encampment at some point, with firbolgs. Maybe they’ll be able to help him.

With that in mind, he sets off down the road, one painful step at a time.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t see anyone throughout the night as he walks, and as the sun rises he wonders if he’ll at least find somewhere to hide and get some rest. He’s got no food and no tent and it’s starting to get a little worrying, really, he’s never been alone on the road without resources, not since that terrible night before Gustav found him. (He’s aware of the similarity, this time, but he knows where he is going, he knows who he is going to, he knows who he is. It steadies him. Still...)

As the sun’s first few weak rays begin to reach him, he spots a large figure ahead, approaching the road from the woods. Instinctively he begins to look for cover, but as he draws closer he recognizes the soft features of a firbolg. He stays his course, waiting to see if he can recognize the stranger as she draws near.

He doesn’t, but she apparently recognizes him, and continues towards him a little faster. “I knew I would find something,” she says by way of greeting as she gets within conversation distance and looks him over. Her words come slow and calm, almost contented. “You were dead, but you are not dead now. I am glad.”

“Sorry, how do you know that?” Molly asks guardedly. It occurs to him that beyond Beau, Keg, Caleb, and Nott, and the godsdamned Shepherds, he has no idea who knows that he died. Oh gods, did the Shepherds tell the others about it to hurt them? Does Yasha— no, _focus on the present, Tealeaf, there’s a stranger talking to you_ , he thinks, and tries not to let the worry show on his face.

“I saw the battle,” the firbolg says simply. “I am Nila. You and your friends tried to fight the evil ones who attacked my village and took my partner and my child. And then your friends brought me to my partner and my child, and they are back home now, and the murderers are dead.”

Relief and recognition both flood through Molly. “That’s right, your elder asked us to be on the lookout for you... they’re okay, though, Yasha and Beau and everybody? They’re safe? Can you take me to them?”

“I do not know where they are now,” Nila says, “but they are still all right. The signs have told me so.”

“I hope the signs are right,” Molly replies, and his tail gives an anxious twitch. Nila doesn’t seem to know for sure, but... surely if the others made it to rescue her child, they made it to Yasha and Jester and Fjord, right?

“You are not all right, though,” Nila continues, voice still gentle. “You are tired and hurting and I think you are also hungry. Here, take this.” She holds out a berry. Molly takes it, a little dubiously, but he’s heard sometimes these things are magic, so he eats it. Sure enough, the fruit carries a rush of vitality in it, and his hunger is filled, his pain lessened, his chest a little warmer, even if he is still bone-tired. His eyes widen a little.

“Well, that’s probably the best berry I’ve ever had. Thanks.”

“It is a goodberry.” Nila says, as if that explains everything. She eyes Molly’s filthy, too-thin clothes and the tapestry slung over his shoulders like a blanket. “Come with me. You did a great thing for my family. We will help you.”

“I— all right, thanks, I’ll take you up on that,” Molly replies. “Only problem is I don’t know how much further I’ll make it, really. I’ve been on the road for hours.”

“That is not a problem,” Nila declares. “I can carry you.” Her features shift, and suddenly there’s a stocky, broad-backed horse standing before him, instead of a firbolg.

“Huh. Okay,” Molly says, blinking at the sight. “That’s not hardly the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.” He follows horse-Nila as she walks over to a sizable rock alongside the road, and uses it to clamber up onto her back. “Lead the way, then, I guess?”

Horse-Nila tosses her head and begins to walk. She has a steady, plodding gait, smoother than the stolen cart-horses the Nein had had, and he finds he can keep his balance even without a saddle. Soon enough he finds himself flopping forward along her neck, dozing off out of pure exhaustion.

 

* * *

 

When he wakes he is no longer riding a horse, but is still being carried. Somehow Nila has smoothly transitioned back to her normal form without dropping him, and carrying him piggyback. The sun is high overhead, though it’s hardly warm out. When he lifts his head from Nila’s shoulder, she pauses. “You are awake. Would you like to walk for a bit?”

Molly blinks the sleep from his eyes. “Please. You don’t have to keep carrying me all this way.”

Nila sets him down, and he shakes the stiffness out of his limbs, tries to work the twinge out of his neck. “It is no trouble,” she tells him. “You are small.”

He has to laugh a little at that; as far as he knows, he’s pretty average for a tiefling, but Nila still towers over him. He briefly recalls another instance of being carried, half-conscious on Yasha’s shoulder after defending the caravan from some raiders— and the frantic yearning is back, the need to get to his friends, despite still not having the energy to do it. “How far have we gone?”

Nila stretches too, and finds a spot to sit down by the side of the road. “We are about halfway. I must rest for a bit, but we will get there near sundown.”

“Sure, do what you need to,” Molly agrees. He’s feeling a bit better, but still fatigued, so he finds a dry-ish rock to sit on beside Nila. “Thanks again for bringing me all this way. Could you— could you tell me what happened, after I...?” He can’t quite finish the sentence. “About when my friends helped you, I guess, and whether they found the others."

“Okay.” Nila pauses to collect her thoughts. “I met your friends after they buried you.Caleb, and Beau, and the little ones Nott and Keg, and Frumpkin, the bird that Caleb kept calling a cat. They did not want to leave you, but they also did not want to let the murderers get away, so they kept going.

“We kept going to Shady Creek Run, and we went to an inn, where everyone was very strange. And then we went to meet a woman called Ophelia, and I think she was very dangerous herself, but she told us to kill the murderers and that they were called the Iron Shepherds. And Caleb asked if she knew anyone who could bring you back, and she told us to go into the woods to find a hermit.

“So we went to find the hermit, and he was a firbolg also, named Caduceus. He was very kind. He made tea for us.” Something clicks in Molly’s memory, then, a howling roar. Tell him he has done well. But Nila is still telling the story, slow and steady, so he tries to keep focus. “He came with us to fight the Iron Shepherds,” she says. “He took the place of a guard. And Beau took the place of a guard. And we killed the rest of the guards. And we killed the woman with the big sword, one of the leader’s favorites.” The barbarian, Molly assumes. “And then we found my son and my partner, and I took them to safety at Caduceus’ house. And a little while later, some humans came, and there was one with a little bird and white hair. His name was Shakäste. He said your friends won, and they were all safe, and that all of the Iron Shepherds were dead.”

Molly does a double take. “Wait, Shakäste was there? Since when?”

“I do not know. He said that he got there a little after the Iron Shepherds, and that they captured him. But your friends helped him as well. He brought back many of the human prisoners, and I helped him heal them, and then he said he would take them to their homes.”

“Huh.” Well, if that’s where Nila got her news from, Molly can probably believe it. “Sounds like they did well.”

“They did. They are very good.” Nila smiles. “I wish a little bit that I had gotten a chance to bring down the lightning on the Iron Shepherds. But I am more glad to have my family back.”

“I can certainly understand that.” Molly smiles as well, a little wistfully. He can’t wait to get back to his friends, though he knows it will take weeks, and he wonders a bit at the fact that the mention of family made him think of them. Must be Yasha. She’s absolutely family.

“You will get to meet them soon,” Nila tells him. “And then you can get some rest, and then we can help you get ready for your journey.” She takes a pouch from one of her pockets, and inhales deeply over it. “Oh, that is good. I am sure we will not have any trouble getting there.”

“What’s that, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“It is full of treasures I have collected. What they smell like tells me how things are going to go,” Nila explains. There’s a little amusement in her voice. “Your friends were very curious about it too. They all wanted to take turns smelling it.”

That’s not a form of divination he’s heard of, but he’s not about to discount it just for that. Plenty of things out there he hasn’t heard of. “Huh. That’s neat. Can I have a go?”

Nila holds forth the pouch. “You may try it if you like.”

Molly looks at the bag up close— a simple leather pouch, not open enough to see the contents— and takes an experimental sniff. Spices and perfume, road-dust and sweat— the scent that he picks up is the scent of the circus camp, of homecoming. He reels back, more from the nostalgia than anything else. “Wow. That’s... wow,” he repeats, awed. Gods, but he needs to get back to the others.

Nila puts the bag away, content with her findings. “You miss your home,” she says. “I will help you get there.”

 

* * *

 

They continue on, and Molly walks alongside Nila for a while. Nila takes everything at an easy pace— travel and speech both, which is a mercy, because with her longer strides, there’s no way Molly could keep up otherwise. She’s fairly quiet, used to a life removed from the bustle and shenanigans of towns and cities, and it sounds like her clan takes things at a similar pace. It sounds like hell to Molly, but seems to work just fine for her. He wonders how she and Yasha would get on— pretty well, he thinks.

He fills some of the time with stories of the Nein. Suddenly he’s eager to talk about them again, maybe because his audience is trustworthy, maybe because he misses them so damn much. He tells Nila about Shakäste in the gnoll mines, and Kiri in the swamp, a safe enough topic now that he knows the kid is safer than she’d be with the Nein. He tells her about Yasha and her flowers, and yeah, actually, he’s sure the two of them would get along just fine. He explains about Frumpkin really being a cat most of the time, smirking when he mentions how Beau goes all soft around the edges whenever she’s presented with something fuzzy. And on, and on. Gods, but it’s good to be able to talk to somebody decent.

After an embarrassingly short time he starts to tire again. Nila takes it in stride, unsurprised, and just like that she’s a horse again. He keeps talking, because she still seems to understand, until he begins to nod off again.

Eventually he wakes again to Nila, once more a firbolg, gently setting him down. The road’s out of sight now, and the waning sunlight filters through sparse trees. “We are almost there,” she tells him. The woods look familiar— probably the same ones he’d passed through earlier, when Caleb had spotted the firbolg healer in the middle of the night.

Sure enough, the trees soon give way to a clearing, and a series of long wooden buildings in a style Molly’s never seen. Here and there he sees the scars of the Iron Shepherds’ attack that Jumnda had described, scorch marks and bare patches in the woolen hangings that decorate most of the buildings where a damaged section must have been removed. It doesn’t look like there’s been time to rebuild, but the cleanup has definitely begun. “Welcome to our village,” Nila says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did they ever tell us the full text of the note Caleb left? I don't think so; I couldn't seem to find it while I was searching transcripts, so this is my take on it.


	7. Next Steps; First Steps

It's not just Nila: firbolgs in general take things at their own pace, Molly has found. Which is probably a good thing so far as his recovery has gone, but is liable to drive him up one of these cozy walls if he can’t get on the road again soon. He’d pretty much collapsed into the first pile of blankets offered to him on his arrival, and woken again midday; he’s spent the afternoon slowly being bounced around between different parts of the village, and it’s clear he won’t have the daylight left to leave today.

The first stop had been the healer Jumnda, and finally getting a good hard look at what remained of the wound that had killed him; she had raised an eyebrow at the near complete lack of evidence of the injury, and given him some of that nasty tea that nevertheless made him feel a lot better. Jumnda had declared him exhausted but healthy, and he’d been whisked away to get a real meal in him, and then, bless every single bit of this village, a wash, even if it was just a small basin of hot water. Small for a firbolg, anyway; having scrubbed off all the dirt and blood before getting in, he’s now sitting in the water, knees bunched up and tail curled around his ankles, because nobody’s told him not to and he can soak at least a third of his muscles like this.

He inspects himself again, the part of his ribs that ought to be completely ruined. The only indication that anything happened to him at all is a faint tracery of scarring, not of a blade, but in a pattern almost reminiscent of the branches of some plant. It’s slightly unnerving, but Jumnda had assured him that there was nothing actually wrong with the scars, no weird surprises lurking under them.

He’s found an unrelated surprise, though. The snake tattoo on his hand has got a faded gray eye now, not a red one, and something tells him he might actually be able to ink over it now. He has the feeling that he’d known the reason for this, before he came back, but damned if he can remember what it is. But if he’s suddenly able to hide the unwanted markings of the past, he’s not going to complain.

The water is growing colder now, and so he gets up and dries off. His own clothes are also currently gone, likewise off for a wash and a mend. The replacements he’s been given aren’t anything he would have picked on his own, but he’s absolutely not going to complain about that either. The trousers are plain, but warm, and anyway they can hardly be seen under his boots and the dark, berry-pink tunic he’s been given— he does rather like the color, he has to admit. It’s a bit of an odd look, all combined, but that’s never stopped him before. He feels a bit stuffy with the collar all done up but then he gets outside again and oh, it’s _warm_ , never mind, it’s perfect.

Now he’s just got to figure out what to do until dinnertime, since he’s not leaving today.

“Magic person!”

Molly looks towards the source of the shout. There’s a pack of kids running about, and one of the smaller ones has just called out to him. It’s Ombo, the boy who he had met with Caleb and Beau and Nott out in the woods— still has the little moon charm, in fact, braided into his hair. He looks like he’s healed up a lot, and he tugs one of the other kids towards Molly, pointing and grinning broadly.

Molly can’t help himself; even with the carnival now left months in the past, an audience demands showmanship. He gives a smile and a bow. “You’re looking well, young man! And might I guess that you and your friends here are in need of some entertainment, a trick, or a story perhaps?” He’s running through his options as he begins to get his patter going— this crowd is a little young for fortunes, and anyway, he hasn’t got his cards. Sleight of hand might be on the table, he’s probably got enough bits of shiny metal on his horns to give out— sure, he doesn’t really want to part with all of them, but there’s what, six kids now crowding him? That’s not so bad. He surreptitiously slides off a ring as he straightens from his bow. “Been a while since I’ve properly done any of this, but I assure you, I have not lost my touch!” He gestures grandly with his free hand, and the kids follow its movement as though it’s glowing; he uses the opportunity to pull the ring out from behind the smallest one’s ear. “Looks like you didn’t wash so well this morning, hm? Don’t worry, I won’t tell.” He hands the ring to the wide-eyed child. “What’ll it be, then? A tale, a show of skill?”

“Story! Story!” Ombo begins to chant, and plunks himself down cross-legged in front of Molly. The others follow suit. It’s easier to see them all this way; for a bunch of kids, many of them are almost as tall as Molly is.

“Very well, a story it shall be! Let’s see, how about...” He draws it out, reads the audience. “Ah! Perfect. This one I heard from a traveler from afar, from Tal’dorei across the sea...” And he launches into a story about a girl, and her twin brother, and her best friend, who happened to be a bear. It’s one of the more light-hearted ones he picked up at the carnival, a sad start but one that quickly melts through to adventures and friendship— sanitized beyond recognition of whatever seed of reality it grew from, he’s sure, but with what these kids have just been through they don’t need more darkness right now. By the end of the story four more firbolg children have joined the audience, along with Nila, following after the smallest of the new additions— must be her son, Molly thinks. Even the littlest one here shows signs of wear and tear from the Shepherds’ attack. Bastards.

The smallest one is the next to speak up after the story, too. “More?” he asks in a tiny voice. Molly’s starting to tire out again, but, well...

“One more, just for you,” he promises, and in a moment of inspiration decides to improvise. “Let me tell you about a friend of mine, and her fantastical magical lollipop...”

 

* * *

 

A second encore, this one featuring a fictionalized Beau and a balance of pratfalls and heroics, and yet another huge meal, and then Molly’s ready to collapse into the blanket pile again. His dreams are strange, but quick to fade in the morning; something with a bird sitting on a bear, and the bird is laughing at him. And something less pleasant, before that, but it’s already gone, no sense worrying about it.

Nila and Jumnda meet him as soon as he’s out and about. “You look much more well rested,” Nila greets him. “Are you going to leave today?”

“If that’s all right,” Molly replies. “Your village is lovely, and I can’t thank you enough for all your help, but I really need to get to my friends.”

“I understand,” Nila says. “We have got your clothes, and some items to help you survive.”

Molly opens his mouth in surprise. “You don’t have to do all that,” he protests, “I wouldn’t want to impose—“

“You gave up your life fighting the evil ones who took my son,” Nila reminds him. “You are not imposing. You need to be able to survive on your journey.”

That’s fair, Molly supposes, and he takes the bundle she holds out to him. It’s wrapped into his coat, which he immediately pulls on over the tunic he’s been given, and his regular clothes besides, cleaned and stitched up. There’s a bedroll and a waterskin, and a pouch full of dried meat and fruit, what he assumes are goodberries , and, to his surprise, a couple of gold pieces. The tapestry is there too, all bundled up at the bottom, and he leaves it there for the moment. Now that he doesn’t need it as a blanket he’s not sure what to feel about it.

“You’ve been a great help,” he says. “Thank you. Really.”

“Come have breakfast,” Jumnda tells him, “and then we will go with you to the road.”

 

* * *

 

Stomach full and goodbyes said, Molly is finally on his way again. His best shot is to head to Hupperdook first, he thinks. He can drum up some more coin and some news, try to get himself a horse... maybe find a caravan going the same way as he is for some safety in numbers, though he’s not optimistic that he’ll find one willing to take a lone, garish tiefling. He pulls his hood up, as much for safety on the road as for warmth. He hates traveling alone, has always had the circus or the Nein to have his back, and to talk to. Since they’re not there, he hurries on.

The walk goes uneventfully to begin with, and Molly only passes a couple of groups, each apparently as intent on reaching their destination as he is. Mid-afternoon, though, a figure moves to block him on the road.

“Stand or deliver, your money an’ your life!”

The would-be highwayman looks more desperate than menacing, and even more hunted when one of the roadside bushes complains, “Dennis, you idiot, you said it wrong again!”

Molly sighs, and drops his hood so he can touch his sword to the back of his neck. “You really aren’t very good at this, you know.” He blinks in surprise as the blade comes away with only a little blood, not ice, lining the edge, but it seems that simply showing his face is enough protection, because the unfortunate Dennis has turned to flee towards the insulting bushes.

“Sorry! Sorry! Very sorry! Didn’t know it was you!”

Recognition sets in and Molly has to suppress a snicker. “All right, boys, out where I can see you,” he calls. “I have to say I’m very disappointed to see you haven’t found a better line of work yet, considering everything my friends and I have done for you, and considering the fairly dire warning my one friend in particular gave you— something about three strikes?”

The bandits shuffle out of the bushes in a penitent line, and Molly does his best not to laugh too hard. Sure enough, it’s the same sorry bunch, and there’s Zenny with the red hair in the middle, looking suitably mortified. Molly throws him a shark’s grin. “Mister Leader! Have you got anything to say about the continued performance of your team?”

“We’re sorry, we’re sorry!” Zenny yelps. “Only, there weren’t nothin’ we could find for honest coin, and we’re just trying to make ends meet, you know?”

Molly puts his sword away and crosses his arms. “Did you try Hupperdook? Plenty of honest work to be done in Hupperdook, near as I could tell. Good nightlife too.”

“Erm, well, no, we couldn’t find it, see...“

Molly can’t keep his hand off his forehead. “You know it’s just down the road, right?” He points. “Thataway. Give me, oh, an hour or so to get myself a good head start, and then go have a try at finding yourselves some alternative to banditry, all right? For your own sakes. Because you are terrible at it and my friends are becoming less and less friendly to those who waylay people on roads.” He walks forward, straightens a few collars, then continues onward.

“Aren’t you going to do the thing with the coin, like last time?” yells his initial assailant— Dennis, he supposes. Really not the brightest tool in this rust-ridden shed, it seems, and the others seem to know it, given the panicked chorus of “shut up!”s that follow his question.

“I’m broke, boys,” Molly calls back over his shoulder. “Would if I could, but I can’t. New jobs, all right? Model citizens? Good? Good. Here’s hoping you don’t see me later.”

He continues on down the road, dissolving into a fit of giggles once he’s a few yards off. A few more yards off, and he stops giggling as a realization hits him.

His sword magic hadn’t worked. And he recalls words now, in that terrible voice: “Forfeit my gifts.”

Huh.

It’s really gone.

He shakes himself, realizes he’s stopped in his tracks, and keeps walking. He’s relieved, in part: this means that tie to the past really has been cut. But without the blood magic, he’s down to his wits and his sword and what little innate magic he possesses to defend himself. It’s only luck that it worked out this time. He really, really can't be out here alone.

Molly pulls up his hood again, and hurries on towards Hupperdook.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to include the damn bandits. Like everyone else, I couldn't resist.  
> I also wanted to make a nod to the very early concept of Molly, way back when he was a S1 backup character, who would have shown up with a sensationalized story about how badly Percy and/or Ripley had screwed things up-- but that's a far darker story than makes sense to tell right now, so we get one about the twins and Trinket instead.
> 
> edit 10/8: Minor changes due to some recalculating of the backstory theories.


	8. Interlude: Requiem

Cree pauses at the altar. Is there truly nothing left? she asks the Queen silently. Lucien is gone again, so soon after his miraculous return. She has no hope for a second miracle. The others are scattered, keeping eyes on the rising dark. She hasn’t heard from anyone on her sending stone in months.

Bad times are coming, with the war with Xhorhas mounting. Cree gazes at the statue of the Queen, asks herself again if she should tell the others to go back to the Ghostslayers. They are too few right now, especially without Lucien. The Order will never have her back, she knows that much, but the others might be able to return, and they could find both strength and safety in numbers, even if they may be too slow to act...

She runs a finger along the fine chain tucked into her robes. Her holy symbol, Zannah’s sending stone, Zoran’s, Tyffial’s, Ottis’, Mariah’s... each of her brethren. Lucien had no stone, not since he was buried. And she can’t bring herself to hope that he will return...

She has built a life here. Perhaps the others have built their own. She will let them be for now, and mourn what she has found and lost.

As she turns away, occupied with her own thoughts, she does not see the raven that perches on the statue’s shoulder, eyeing her keenly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmmmmmmm


	9. Anything to Pass the Time

Here is the problem: Molly needs to sleep.

He doesn't have any idea how one is supposed to sleep outdoors with nobody to keep watch.

Outdoors with the Nein, with a watch and Caleb’s silver thread, sure. Outdoors with the circus, and the wagons, and even more of a watch, sure. Alone? No clue. The only times he’s been really alone, really truly alone with nobody to turn to, have been the nights after crawling out of a grave.

It’s absolutely terrifying.

He tries pressing on at first, but he’s faltering, slowing, there’s no way he can keep this pace for however many days it takes to reach the city without sleep. He considers the house where the group fought the ankhegs, just for some shelter, but if there are more of the monsters, he’ll never make it out of there. He almost wishes he’d let Zenny and his gang of idiots walk with him, it might have been better than nothing.

Right now he’s sitting behind a clump of shrubs, a ways off from the road. He’s wrapped in the bedroll the firbolgs gave him, trying to sleep sitting up like he’s seen Yasha do. Hell, she knows how to survive on her own, he should have asked her at some point, but it had just never been something that had occurred to him. “Stormlord,” he mumbles, “I could really use some company right now, any chance you could loan me Yasha for a bit?”

Nothing. The sky is completely clear, the moon only a couple days past full. He changes tactic. “Moonweaver, you’ve done a great deal for me already, I know, but I could really use some help right now, I don’t know how to keep safe out here so if you could just... keep a lookout? So that I last for more than a couple days? I feel like you were looking out for me at the start, so if you were to... do that again right now I guess I’d really be terribly grateful for it.”

He waits. Nothing again. He supposes it’s to be expected; he hasn’t got the kind of personal connection to his god that Jester or Yasha have to theirs. He's almost jealous, though he knows that that connection comes with a price he wouldn’t actually be up to paying.

He drowses fitfully, trying to force himself to be a light sleeper, until finally he dozes off entirely, and dreams of a battle in which all is completely silent. He tries to call out, tries to spit curses into the fray, but the words die in his throat. The dream fades in and out, never quite driving him awake.

But as the sun comes up he does wake, and he gives a shaky prayer of thanks for that as he packs up his things to move on.

 

* * *

 

The second day is shit.

The sky clouds over, and the wind goes through even the warm clothing the Guiatao had given him. The first passersby in the other direction visibly hasten to pass when they see him, the cart driver loudly muttering something about devilsblood just when he’s in earshot. The second set to go by ignore him entirely.

He walks, and walks. It was so much faster, going the other way, the whole ride an urgent blur, and people to run his mouth at while he fretted. Beau’s accused him of loving the sound of his own voice; the truth is, he needs to be surrounded with other people’s, will goad them into filling the silence any which way.

He tries singing a bit, some of the carnival’s old road songs, to pass the time. Anyone could start off a song, back then, Gustav or Ornna or later Molly himself, and the others would inevitably join in, layering different timbres and levels of skill. The Knot sisters would always jump at the chance, some unspoken agreement between them that whichever started first would get melody, loser gets harmony, and always, always compete for it. Even Yasha joined in a couple times, softly enough that Molly might be the only one that knows she ever did.

But out here it’s just him, and he trails off soon enough with nobody to pick up the next verse. He should teach the Nein some of these, he thinks, when he finds them again. He bets there are at least three good voices going unused between his newer friends, maybe even four if he could ever get Jester to convince Beau. And anyway, it’s not about talent, it’s about community, and having something to do.

Gods, but he wants someone to talk to. He thinks of what Jester said once, about talking to the Traveler when she was growing up alone. “Do you like that sort of thing?” he asks the air, fidgeting with his Moonweaver charm for a moment. “Hearing about what your followers have seen? I know you’re there, of course, somewhere, just not sure if you want to hear it or not. And, well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t seen all that much yet since we last... ah... met.” He shakes his head. “No, never mind, I haven’t really got anything, I’m a bit shit at this to be honest. Really, truly appreciate the help, haven’t done anything great with it yet, I’m afraid.” And he keeps going.

 

* * *

 

The second night is a little warmer than the first, but otherwise just as bad. Molly reaches the spot where the Nein had camped the night of the abductions, and forces himself on for a while longer, feeling even more rattled. He settles down near a couple of boulders, leaning up against one of them so that he’s not visible from behind, and offers his usual prayer over his remaining sword. He made it through the last night, at least. Hopefully his luck will hold.

The third day it rains— not a storm, which would at least bring with it some hope of Yasha, but a light, depressing, consistent drizzle that takes a few hours to soak him through and doesn’t let up. He runs through his catalog of stories to pass the time— they were never a main act in the carnival, but they brought in a fair share of coin as a pre-show act outside the tent, and might get him a bit to work with in Hupperdook. And it’s something to do, running through each of them quietly, no substitute for having people around but at least it gives him something to focus on. He wishes he had something to sleep under, when night falls, even just a cart again.

The fourth day he keeps up the stories, tries singing again, anything to keep his mind off his lack of companions. The rain has stopped, and his clothes are finally drying out; he’s thankful for the small mercies, that he doesn’t fall sick easily. Mid-afternoon Hupperdook finally comes into view in the distance, and it’s all he can do not to break into a run, but he has to keep an even pace if he wants to get there without getting exhausted.

It's strange walking into Hupperdook alone. He still garners suspicion, of course, but it's different than what the Nein received. He makes up something about looking for work as his reason for entry, and it's hardly a lie; he needs coin, even though much of the work he's suited to is hardly what the authorities would like.

The desperate loneliness of travel takes on a different tone in the city, too. Finally, there are people again, voices that aren’t his own, but they’re all strangers, with no interest in him; he could strike up a conversation with plenty of them, he’s sure, but they’re still not who he’s after. The sun has sunk low, and the streets are beginning to light up, and it’s a wonderful sight again but he’s got nobody to share it with. He grins slightly all the same, catches a few of the thrown flowers, and really this is still _so_ much better than the empty road. He’s beginning to actually brighten up a little when a familiar voice rings out.

“Hey, it’s you!”

He spins around. Bobbing amid the sea of hurrying gnomes, he spots a cloud of red-brown hair, and a minute later, Rissa Tinkertop shoves her way through to stop in front of him. “I hadn’t heard anything about the Mighty Nein being back in town!”

“‘Fraid they aren’t, to my knowledge,” Molly tells her, but he can’t help but smile wider at finally seeing a familiar face, any familiar face. “We ran into some bad luck and I got separated from them. Have you heard anything about where they might be?”

Rissa looks slightly disappointed. “Nope, nothing. You’re on your own, then? Headed back to the Blushing Tankard?”

Molly shakes his head. “Haven’t got the gold for such a fancy establishment right now. Actually, you know your way around here— any chance you know of any odd jobs I could get in on right now? If I’m to catch up with the rest of the Nein, I need some more coin to get going with.”

“Yeah, there’s always a couple around,” Rissa says. She shifts from foot to foot, thinking. “Tell you what, though, why don’t you come have dinner with us, tells us the news?”

“I can do at least one of those things,” Molly promises. All of his news is either bad or lacking in detail, but a roof overhead and people to share the meal with— he’ll gladly pass along what little good news he does have, for that. “Lead the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops i made myself sad


	10. Echoes in Hupperdook

As it turns out, one of the odd jobs Rissa has heard of its actually in her father's shop, Molly finds as they converse over dinner. Cleff is reworking part of the shop and his workshop and wants to take an inventory, but he doesn't want to have to close the shop to do it, and Rissa is in the middle of another job at the moment.

"I can't spell or add all that well to be writing down inventory," Molly admits, having learned both skills on the fly with the circus, "but catching people's interest to buy and making change, those I can certainly do."

“If you’re interested, it’ll be five gold for the five days,” Cleff offers. “And we’ve a spare room if you need lodgings, though it’s a little cramped.”

It’s funny what a shock the number is, considering that five gold for a week was plenty good money to Molly in the circus days. Traveling with the Nein was just windfall after windfall, up until it all went to shit. Five gold won’t pay for a horse, but it’ll buy passage on someone’s cart, perhaps, and the delay’s not too long. Certainly a faster five gold than he could get from performing, if he even had cards. And he certainly can’t do the Nein’s kind of combat-heavy jobs alone. “That would be wonderful, if I’m not imposing.”

“Not at all! You and your friends did me a great service, and I haven’t been this inspired in my work in a long time." Cleff indicates the pile of blueprints that clutter the half of the table not currently being used for dinner. "It'll be no trouble."

And they chatter on, Molly explaining a little of what he’s heard secondhand of the rest of the Nein’s recent victory, and Rissa describing the next Hour of Honor after they’d left town, until Molly begins to nod forward over the table and the Tinkertops rush him off to the spare room to sleep before they’re faced with the problem of having to carry him there.

The spare room really is a bit cramped, but Molly's able to lay out his bedroll on a diagonal so that he can stretch out. He lays out his sword at the foot to pray, adds in some extra thanks for being in civilization under a roof with people he knows again. Fjord used to ask about that, he recalls. Molly's spun plenty of tales about the prayers depending on who's asking, but really, it's just a habit that he hopes has some effect. Apparently it does, if the Moonweaver showed up to collect him from the Raven Queen-- and he realizes he only just remembers that part happening, another fragment of the memory of being dead drifting up. "Thank you," he whispers again, awed. He's still really not sure how he came to wake up again, doesn't want to question it too closely, but he owes the goddesses, it seems, those two and one more-- the roaring voice he faintly recalls. The Wildmother.

He probably ought to make some kind of offering later, though he hasn't got the slightest idea how. Temples? Probably something to do with temples. He’ll figure it out when he’s not exhausted.

...He hopes Fjord’s all right, wherever he is. And Yasha, and Jester. And the others.

 

* * *

 

The first day in the shop is a whirlwind of learning what goes where and marveling at the inventions that he hadn’t had time to look at on previous visits. There aren’t too many customers, though Molly gets the sense that they’re at least more frequent than they used to be, and business is picking up for Cleff. The second day brings a surprise, though.

The little bell on the door jingles as it opens, letting in a gust of chilly air. “Welcome to the fantastical shop of Cleff Tinkertop, inventor extraordinaire,” Molly calls out, waiting for the customer to come into view.

“Welcome to the Mighty Nein!”

Molly blinks up from a little wind-up bird he’d been examining. That was Nott’s voice— no, he realizes, as a different but still familiar little figure rounds the corner, it was a copy of Nott’s voice. Kiri’s looking at him expectantly, as two of the Schuster kids stare wide-eyed at the shop’s wonders. “Are they here?” Kiri asks in a faintly familiar voice, probably Mrs. Schuster’s, and then switches back to Nott’s. “Jester?”

“Sorry, just me,” Molly says. It makes sense that she’d see him and hope for someone else— he’d kept plenty of distance from her before, out of fear that something awful and unpreventable was going to happen to her. Now she’s safe, so it’s easier to let himself feel bad when she deflates a little, clearly having gotten her hopes up. “Tell you what, though. If you want to write to her, bring me a letter before the week’s up, I’ll get it to her. I know she misses you. You being good for your new family?”

Kiri nods. “Take care of them,” she confirms in Molly’s own voice, and gods if that’s not still weird. At least it’s his own tone and accent instead of some uncanny echo of someone else. “Get one toy to share,” she adds in Mr. Schuster’s voice.

“You kids are here to shop, then?”

“Yeah,” one of the other kids confirms, Jude, he thinks. The tiny gnome gapes up at Molly. “How come you’re working in the shop instead of beating up machines and stuff?”

“Needed a break,” Molly says airily. “I’m on vacation while my friends beat up more things, but I expect I’ll be back to all that soon enough.”

“I thought vacations were all going to the lake and things,” says the other one, the little pickpocket, Layla.

It’s easy enough to fall back into bullshitting, far easier than telling the real story to a bunch of kids. “Ah, but you see, after the machine, we fought a lake monster. I needed the change of scenery.”

“What kind of lake monster? Did it have big huge teeth?” Jude and Layla are entranced, but Molly sees Kiri flinch, and realizes he needs to steer this away. Aquatic monsters with big huge teeth are not a great subject.

“No, it was a big old squiddy thing, with all these horrible arms,” he declares. The tale does need to be finished now that he’s started to wind it up, at least, even if he needs to make it quick. “Jester magicked up a giant lollipop and hit the monster until it curled all up and— just like that— sunk back under the waves, never to be seen again.”

“Giant lollipop,” Kiri repeats, apparently satisfied.

“Right you are. But here, why don’t I help you three find something marvelous, since I have it on good authority that you’re in the market for it?”

He manages to keep the three kids out of anything truly dangerous as he shows them around the shop, but ultimately they settle on the little clockwork bird he was looking at when they went in, and if he shaves a couple silvers off the price so that it fits their budget, well, he can pay those back himself, easily enough. Jude’s got a detailed explanation of how Kiri needs a doll to be friends with Layla’s doll and this is the one that looks the most like Kiri, and Molly has to admit it warms him to hear the kids worrying about that sort of thing, not about parents in jail or getting eaten by alligators.

Finally, as one of the bells that marks the time rings outside, the kids settle down and get ready to go. Kiri pauses at the door fixes Molly with one last examining look. “Going to come back, right?” she asks in a wobbly Jester-voice.

Molly sighs. “I won’t lie to you. I don’t know when they’ll be back here,” he tells her. “You know us, we get into all kinds of dangerous nonsense. But I do know for sure that when Jester said that, she meant it. They really do mean to visit you again.” He drops to a stage whisper. “Don’t tell any of them I said it, but they’re all big softies about you.”

Kiri seems to cheer up a little, and chirps a laugh. “All big softies.”

“Yep. You are absolutely going to tell them I said that.” Molly smirks; he’s sure Beau will love that assessment, which he fully intends for her to hear at some point.

“Yes, I’m very sweet.”

“Mhm. Off you go, now. I’ll be here the rest of this week, and then I’m going to go back to the others, so if you’ve a letter for Jester or anything bring it to me by then, okay?”

Kiri nods seriously, and scurries off.

With the Schusters gone and no other customers in sight, Molly begins to put away the windup toys the gnome kids had been looking at, and his mind wanders. If the others haven’t visited Kiri, have they even passed through Hupperdook again? If they haven’t passed through Hupperdook, have they even headed back to Zadash? He trusts the second-and-thirdhand information he got from Nila, but it doesn’t actually tell him where his friends have gone.

He puts a hand into his pocket, finds the note, now creased and worn from being carried and reread for days. Caleb had been sure that the Nein would go back; after all, they had a job to collect on. And they survived to kill the Shepherds, so they’ve got to be able to stand up to any number of lesser threats. Molly’s just got to trust that they’ll make it back, he guesses. He just has to get there, which takes money, which takes time to make. Too much time.

He appreciates Cleff’s help, really he does, but the end of the week can’t come fast enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Molly's original coolness towards Kiri was a pessimistic attempt to avoid getting attached, I figure he'd be a little friendlier now that she's not in constant danger traveling with the Nein? But that doesn't mean she has to like him, of course. Their interactions are a little hard to write. (As far as defenseless tagalongs go, though, man, just wait until you finally find them down the Menagerie Coast, with Nugget, and the owl, and the ferret if Nott and/or the owl hasn't eaten it yet...)
> 
> Also D&D economy is a nightmare, yall, I gave myself a headache figuring out how much regular people who aren't adventurers make in relation to how much horses cost in relation to etc etc etc. (Trying to make adventurer money without a party at a low level is dangerous, do not recommend.)
> 
> Fun story though, apparently back in 3.5e, a 10-foot ladder cost less than a 10-foot pole... meaning if you removed all the rungs to get two 10-foot poles, you could theoretically sell them for profit and make infinite money. I say theoretically because no sane DM would let you do this. ANYWAY YEAH doing numbers for gold is hard but at least I'm probably better at it than that lmaooo


	11. Letters and Offerings

On the last day, Kiri comes in again with a stack of unevenly torn papers— mostly pictures she’s drawn, Molly sees as she stands up on her toes to push them onto the counter. “All ready to send?” he asks her.

“Ja.” She’s using Caleb’s voice this time, and Molly has to wonder if she selects the voices on purpose sometimes; every time she copies another member of the Nein he’s caught off guard, reminded that he’s not with them. “All ready for delivery,” she continues in a mercifully unfamiliar voice, some customer of her parents’, he expects.

“Then delivered they shall be.” He takes the papers, and has to grin at the picture on top, of Kiri as a little dark blob all caught up in the arms of a vague blue Jester-smear. “Excellent likeness, by the way.” She chirps happily in response. “I expect Jester will write you back as soon as she gets it,” Molly adds.

Kiri fluffs her feathers with satisfaction, and wanders off to putter around the shop. Molly keeps an eye on her from a distance to ensure she’s not causing trouble until another customer comes to the counter, and by the time they’ve paid up, Kiri is hesitating by the door, apparently reluctant to leave.

He raises an eyebrow. “Did you walk here all on your own?”

“I am Kiri.”

“That sounds like a ‘yes’.”

“Very good at remembering directions,” Kiri insists in what’s probably Mr. Schuster’s voice.

“I see. But now you’ve forgotten them?”

Kiri shakes her head indignantly. “Going to come back, right?” Jester’s voice, again, all full of tears.

Well, shit. “I really don’t think they’ll be back today,” Molly says sympathetically. “When I said they’d visit, I meant weeks or months. Far as I know, they have to go back to Zadash before they can come back here.”

“Far as I know.” Kiri’s giving him a suspicious little squint as she repeats his words, expression accusatory even though she can’t change the tone. “I won’t lie to you.”

Molly sighs. “I’m not,” he insists. “You can doubt that I know anything if you want, that’s fair. I usually don’t. But right now all I have is the letter they left for me when I got, uh, lost. That said they’re going to Zadash, which is a couple weeks’ travel away. And it’s only been a couple weeks, so if they did what they said, they won’t be here for a while longer, even if they come back here next.”

Kiri considers, then peeps softly, and when she speaks again it’s Jester, concerned. “How did you get separated?”

“There was a big fight with some real bad people. I’d rather not talk about it,” Molly replies, scratching distractedly at the base of one of his horns. “Nothing a little kid needs to hear about, certainly.” The bandits and the Tinkertops hadn’t pried into how he’d gotten separated; Nila had already known. Kiri is about the last person he wants to get into it with.

“Okay?” Kiri asks, and shuffles her feet, suspicion forgotten, worry returned. “The Mighty Nein.”

“Yeah, I think so. They left me the letter, and I heard from some trustworthy people that they were all right. They got hurt, but nothing they won’t recover from.”

Kiri looks at the door again, then apparently makes up her mind and walks back into the shop. “Write to her,” she declares, and then switches to a couple more voices he doesn’t recognize. “More. Get well soon.” And she produces some spare paper from the little satchel she’s carrying, and sits on the floor to write some more letters.

Molly shrugs, unsure of what to do with her. “You do that, then.”

 

* * *

 

Rissa comes in just before closing. Kiri is still sitting on the floor, apparently writing a small novel to supplement the letters and pictures she’s already given Molly, and the last of the customers is packing up. “You trying to babysit as well as keep shop?” Rissa asks Molly, with a glance at Kiri. “I thought you guys found her a home last time.”

“No, we did, she just showed up here,” Molly replies. “I do not count as a responsible adult as far as that one is concerned. Or for much of anything, outside my actual job.”

“That last part is an important clarification, isn't it.” Rissa surveys the shop, which is indeed in good order. “Last day, huh?”

“Yep. Certainly an interesting enough shop, but I need to keep moving. Got to find some way to head to Zadash tomorrow, besides walking.”

“You could try the stage wagons,” Rissa suggests. “They always take a couple passengers, maybe even give you a discount if you show you can help protect the wagon.”

“There’s an idea. Any chance you could show me where they pick up? Guide a bit of the Nein around again for old times’ sake?”

Rissa grins. “Sure thing. It’ll have to be this evening after you close, though, I’ll be on the job in the tomorrow by the time you’ll want to leave.”

“Fine by me.” Molly thinks for a moment, back to his plans made earlier in the week. “Actually, there’s one other errand I need to run tonight too, if that’s all right? If there’s a temple district here, anyway. I need to make an offering.”

Rissa raises an eyebrow, but doesn't pry further. “Nothing big or fancy, but we have all the regular temples. Do you need to bring Kiri home too?”

“She said she came here on her own, but I suppose we probably should. Her new family lives on the Idlework Shelf, wherever that fits into things.”

“Temples, then the kid, then the station,” Rissa decides. “Then drinks? Maybe even on me, this time, there’s not seven of you to pay for.”

“That is deeply tempting and I may have to take you up on it.”

As they chatter, Kiri looks up again. “Okay, okay, okay,” she says, and this time it’s in Yasha’s soft voice, and Molly’s breath suddenly catches in his chest again, because this is the first time he’s heard Yasha, and just like that he needs his best friend back again in a way that can’t be distracted from. Damned little voice recorder. Kiri seems unperturbed, though, and stacks up her additional set of letters and brings them up to him. She points at the top one, and then to Molly.

He takes the paper and reads.

_Molly I am sorry you got lost. Even if you are kind of mean sometimes. I hope you find Jester and Not and Yasha and Ford and Caleb and Frumkin soon. The other extra letters are for them. Don’t read unless they share. Sharing is ok. Thank you for the bird toy and you should pet Frumkin when you see him. Also I know the way home but it is dark and noisy now so I will walk with you._

He looks over the top of the note at Kiri. He’s not entirely sure how to feel about it, and her expression is likewise inscrutable. “You’re a good kid,” he admits finally. “I’m glad you have some real parents now, instead of all us idiots.”

She answers back in Fjord’s voice. “You’re always a member.”

Molly has to chuckle, and reaches out to muss the feathers on Kiri’s head. She clicks at him indignantly. “They’re not gonna forget you, y’know. They’ll be back to visit someday. You ready to go home?”

“Okay, okay, okay.” And as Molly stands there, stricken again by Yasha’s voice, Kiri gives his hand a quick pat and then scurries off to pack up her satchel.

 

* * *

 

After he’s closed up the shop and turned everything back over to Cleff, they head to Hupperdook’s small temple district, well out of the evening crowds. Rissa leads from one side, pointing out the way, while Kiri tags along on the other, watching curiously as Molly checks out a couple of the stands that sell incense, looking for something to offer.

He’s not actually sure she should be on this trip. Two of the three goddesses he wants to thank aren’t exactly welcome here, since it’s still the Empire, and the only one whose temple is available is not a terribly cheery visit. He’d told Kiri so, but she’d just fluffed up. “Cheery place,” she’d repeated in his own voice, then in Jester’s, “I’m very sweet.” He hopes that means she doesn’t intend to follow in Jester’s habit of pranking temples, if Jester’s ever told her about that. She can’t possibly be as stealthy about it as Jester is.

“I’ll just be a minute,” he says when they finally reach the entrance to the temple, and Rissa gets the hint and stands outside. Kiri doesn’t, and keeps following him, tugging at his sleeve and pointing at the flock of ravens that crowds the temple’s courtyard. “Yep, they work here, I think,” he tells her.

An acolyte in a mask approaches, and his skin crawls. He’s square with Her, he thinks, just here to leave a token of appreciation, no reason they would want anything... bad... with him... He clears his throat. “Hi, yes, wonderful temple you’ve got, I was just hoping to leave an incense offering...?”

The acolyte nods. “There’s an altar for such offerings this way.”

They turn with the expectation that he’ll follow, and he looks to make sure that Kiri is approximately staying out of trouble before trailing after. The altar for public offerings is covered with little memorials, and he kneels down to place the incense he’s brought. “You gave me another chance,” he says quietly. “I know you’re not often one to do that. I won’t forget that.”

Unsure of what else to say, he begins to straighten up, when something large and black collides with his left horn. “Gah!” He backpedals away from the altar, narrowly avoiding knocking some of the offerings off it, and tries to regain his balance.

The raven perching on his horn doesn’t do much to help. “Hello to you too,” Molly says, exasperated, once he’s regained some modicum of composure. It’s craning its neck around at a slightly ridiculous angle, staring him right in the eyes, so close that he can see little dark glints of color amid the black feathers on its head, like beads he’d seen woven into someone’s hair. “I did say I was grateful. Was there something else you wanted to tell me, or are you just doing this for fun?”

The raven clicks its beak at him, then pecks him lightly on the nose and takes off. It circles around, whaps him on the shoulder with a wing, and takes off. Kiri runs up, staring after it; it wheels around to look at her for a moment, then flies off.

Molly checks to make sure the jewelry on his horn hasn’t been knocked off-center, then checks to see if anyone’s looking. “All right,” he tells Kiri, satisfied that nobody’s going to come give him a hard time for messing with one of the birds. “Visit’s over.”

“Hey. Take care of yourself,” he hears from beside him as he turns to leave. He knows the voice, even though being dead is the haziest of his memories. It’s the voice of the Guide. He spins around in shock, but all he sees is Kiri, looking up at him expectantly. He raises an eyebrow at her.

“Were you talking to him?”

Kiri blinks. “They work here,” she offers, and trots ahead to leave the courtyard. Molly shrugs helplessly and follows.

 

* * *

 

With his offering to the Raven Queen done, and no way to find a shrine to the Moonweaver or the Wildmother, all that remains is to return Kiri to the Schusters, and for Rissa to show Molly the station he’ll be leaving from tomorrow. Easy enough.

Or it ought to be, but for the fact that someone’s decided to make a target of him on the way back.

He feels the brush at his pocket first, and shoots his hand back to grab the pickpocket’s arm. “I assure you, there’s nothing worth taking in there,” he says lightly, and spins around to face the thief as Rissa and Kiri startle and back away. She’s another gnome, probably, glaring out from under a cloak, and instead of scampering off after being caught in the act, she opts to go for a knife instead.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Molly gripes, and reaches for his swords. Sword, singular. His free hand flails a little bit in the air as he adjusts his balance, and the thief comes in to try to stab him in the leg as Rissa shouts in alarm.

There’s a glow from his empty hand, and the knife grazes away, leaving only a superficial gash. The thief looks up at him, wide-eyed, and flees.

“For fuck’s sake,” Molly repeats, now in aggrieved confusion. He looks down at the wound. There’s a faint silver glow across it, same as his hand. Experimentally he brings his own sword closer to his hand, only for it to be nudged away by some arcane force. “I thought I was supposed to be done with this kind of surprise.”

“I killed people,” Kiri pipes up, helpfully. She has no knife, she’d given it back to the Nein when they left her, but she’s got her little fists up as though to help him deal with the fleeing pickpocket.

Molly sighs. “No, dear. No, you didn’t. Come on, let’s get you home before someone else tries to rob me and makes more nonsense magic fall out.”

“What, does that happen a lot?” Rissa asks, eyes darting around wildly to look for another threat.

“The robbery or the magic?”

“Both.”

“First one, not more than it happens to anyone else,” Molly tells her. “Second one, it’s a long, boring story.”

“You want to tell it to me later?”

“No.”

As they hurry on, with Rissa looking over her shoulder every few paces, he hears a raven caw, one last time.

 

* * *

 

The Schusters thank him for returning Kiri, and she gives him a quick wave and runs inside— he gets the feeling she maybe wasn’t supposed to stay at the shop all day. Rissa shows him the station, and then a pub near the station, and he manages to avoid getting as drunk as he’d really kind of like to, because it the station schedule says the coach leaves not long after dawn.

“You gonna be okay finding your friends?” Rissa asks as they trek back to the apartment behind Cleff’s shop, only a little buzzed. Fireworks paint the chilly air again, as Hupperdook parties on into the night.

Molly shrugs. “Probably? I’m always fine eventually.”

“That sounds like bullshit to me.”

“That’s fair. It _is_ bullshit. But I’ve got to get back to them, one way or another. Why, have you got any extra help to offer?”

“Not really. It just seemed like the right sort of thing to ask.” It’s Rissa’s turn to shrug. “Good luck out there. And thanks for helping my dad out again.”

“Thanks yourself; I needed the money. And hey, if you see the others around again without me, tell ‘em I went to Zadash like Caleb said to, okay?” Molly pauses for a moment. “Ah, they probably think I’m dead, so they’ll likely react pretty strongly. Maybe I should leave a note with you, just in case.”

Rissa squints up at him. “Anyone ever tell you you’re really weird?”

Molly grins. “Regularly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Worldbuilding question: How the hell does the long-distance mail get delivered in the Dwendalian Empire? Answer: stagecoaches/stage wagons, cause I said so and I needed a cheap form of travel.  
> \- Buddy if you only knew how stealthy Jester can be about pranking temples...  
> \- Corvids are such delightful little shitheads. Especially when they're named Vax'ildan.  
> \- Can the guides of the dead talk to kenku? I don't think the lore says so, but I'm going to say something something mental voice something something magic. Also, Vax definitely taught Kiri "Shit." like he did for Velora, but I didn't really have a way to work it in there. (Not that there's no way she hadn't learned it from the Nein anyway, but yknow.)


	12. Interlude: Seeker

The cold wind turns the horse’s breath to steam as it canters through the Savalier Wood, and the beast would be shivering if not for the heat raised by its exertions. Not so for its rider; her heavy cloak keeps out much of the cold, and the arcane workings she has steeped herself in over the years keep her from feeling the remainder.

Three days, she had tried to discern what had become of the ritual-stone. Three days, wasted, useless. She had tested the plant that she’d found growing from it from every angle she could work, finding no flaw in her own workings, no interference another mage could have posed. The stone’s power had only just doubled, a mere few days before, but this pointless sapling held none of that power. Souls did not simply grow into trees.

And so she had tested for outside influences as well, the fey, the fiendish, the elemental. Even the elder things from the deep, just in case. And what she finally found, in its barest traces, was the divine itself. But the gods themselves could not meddle without mortal help; if they could, then she could do the same in the opposite direction, and the stone would never have needed creating. And so there must have been a cleric. And so she has ventured out to find that cleric; their meddling is both an insult and a threat. And so she _will_ find them.

Perhaps that tabaxi of Lucien’s, she thinks. Cree had followed always at his right hand, but there had been misgivings there, oh yes. None too bright, it had seemed, but perhaps she has figured something out...

Or perhaps another has found the old grave near the Run, and recognized some inkling of the sacrilege that had occurred there. The gravekeepers in the Wood have their own high-minded idea of what is natural. She’s on her way to question them now, and if that fails, she’ll need to find some way of tracking down Lucien’s blood cleric...

She rides on through the Wood, hoofbeats muffled by the falling snow.


	13. Are We There Yet

Molly sits awake in the spare room. The fireworks are beginning to die down, and he should be sleeping if he’s to make his departure time tomorrow. But now that he’s away from anyone else’s attention, he’s free to be rattled about the magic he’d done earlier. “Any of the three of you want to explain that?” he mutters to the air. “I didn’t have any problem with you taking the blood magic, I’m not trying to use it again, I have no idea what that was.” He thinks over the rest of the evening, and a though occurs to him: the raven, perching him on his horn, poking him in the nose same as the guide had right before he woke up. That should help, he remembers someone saying, probably the guide. “If it’s something you gave me, I could have used some instructions,” Molly grumbles.

He traces his hand through the air experimentally, visualizes the pickpocket’s knife. There’s another shimmer of energy around his hand, and the rest of him, in fact. He brings his sword experimentally towards his forearm.

The blade does make contact, and he draws it away before it deals more than a superficial nick. Seconds later, the shimmer dissipates altogether.

A very temporary measure, then, but potentially useful. “You want to explain that in a dream or whatever, I’ll be all ears,” he says finally, and lies down to sleep. New powers or not, and he’s always hated those, it’s going to be a long day tomorrow.

* * *

The stage wagon isn't the most comfortable ride, but it'll do. The drivers had looked at Molly skeptically, but took his fare all the same, and now Molly's stretched out on one of the wooden benches in the back. There's a bespectacled half-elf on the opposite bench, who's barely moved the whole time except to turn the pages of the heavy book open across his lap. Up front sit the two drivers, taking turns with the reins and the watch. They've been grim and purposeful the whole time— it's clear they expect trouble. None has come.

Molly thinks he may well die of boredom, at this rate.

He needs company. His friends, preferably. Friendly acquaintances like Rissa would suffice. What he's got is a complete stranger, who seems relatively harmless as far as those go, but who has thus far been entirely non-interactive. It's not like Molly has any reading material himself; for one, he did promise not to read Kiri's letters to the others, and for two, he doubts they'd last him all that long anyway. And besides, he’s never managed to keep himself occupied with reading before. He hasn’t even got his cards to mess with.

Eventually he gives up and leans over towards the half-elf. “Whatcha reading?”

There's a long pause before the man remembers to answer. "Terribly written magical theory texts," he says at last. "But if you don't mind, I've got a lot to get through." And then he's back to it, doing a remarkable job of tuning Molly out.

The next couple of days pass excruciatingly. Molly bothers the drivers intermittently, only to be brushed off at every turn. The half-elf turns out to be more focused than unfriendly, but he’s so absorbed in his work that he can’t carry a conversation to save his life— worse than Caleb, really. Molly has to wonder if all wizards are like that to some extent.

He swaps watch shifts with the drivers at night, after they’re satisfied that he knows how to use his sword and have realized the utility of someone who can see in the dark. He practices the little shielding trick, and manages to produce a bigger one that lasts a lot longer, through the rest of the watch shift at least— not something he could do too many times without rest, he thinks, but potentially even more useful. He manages to make some useless little lights, too, just little sparkles around his hands, but that’s kind of neat, honestly. Plenty of potential there for card tricks, if nothing else. They’re harmless, which is honestly sort of delightful— almost all his old powers were aimed at harming, even though he put them to good use protecting.

He starts to practice with the sparkles on the road, too, as something to do. It turns out that this is what it finally takes to get the half-elf to pay attention. “That’s not bad prestidigitation,” he comments as Molly sets a little spark orbiting around one of his horns. “Did you spend some time at any of the bardic colleges? I wouldn’t take you for an academy type.”

Molly shrugs. “I’m sort of self-taught,” he says vaguely. “Figured out I could do it a little while back. You know how it works?”

The half-elf puts a hand to his chin thoughtfully. “Sorcery usually manifests earlier in life. You didn’t... make a deal with anything strange just before this started, did you?”

“Not to my knowledge?” Molly pulls his coat closer round his shoulders, suddenly incredibly uncomfortable. He certainly doesn’t remember making any deals, other than giving up the blood magic. The time spent being dead is still hazy, but he really doesn’t think there were any deals made that he was aware of. Could gods trick you into that, was that allowed?

But the half-elf seems unperturbed. “Well, ‘usually’ isn’t always, I suppose. You’re lucky if that was your first accidental spell— there are plenty of stories of someone finding out by lighting something on fire, or freezing the harvest. That kind of spell will let you do all kinds of little special effects visually, and any number of little handy tasks— heating food, cleaning clothes, and so forth.”

Molly butts in, because he’s got more questions and the half-elf— the wizard, he must be, shows no signs of stopping now that he’s got going. “Actually, the first one I remember doing is this,” he says, and calls up the shimmer around his hand. “You know what that one is?”

The wizard looks closely. “Looks like a barrier,” he says. “Also harmless, certainly handy if anything jumps you. Have you got any others?”

“Just a stronger version of this, so far,” Molly replies. “You wouldn’t happen to know how this kind of magic turns up, would you?”

It’s the wizard’s turn to shrug. “Honestly, there are any number of ways. Any strong brush with the arcane or the extraplanar could do it, if the circumstances are right. It can be hereditary, too, though those cases tend to find out early on.” He rummages in his bag for another book. “You might try and see if you can cast any of the other beginner spells in here— the harmless ones, anyway, nothing that will do damage in the cart,” he adds hurriedly. 

Molly takes the book with a strange mix of trepidation and relief. Whatever is going on now, maybe it’s less weird than what was going on before. He opens the book, finds a selection of spells copied down in a slightly messy hand— maybe the wizard’s earliest studies, from the look of it— and begins to struggle through understanding the notation to try and make things happen.

* * *

Despite the drivers’ suspicions, the wagon arrives in Berleben unbothered. With a few scrap components borrowed from the wizard, Molly has succeeded in making various small objects glow for a while (his jewelery, his sword, the wizard’s luggage), in annoying the drivers (admittedly not difficult), and in finally getting a name and a story out of the wizard (one Jules Merrin, traveling from Tal’dorei to study certain texts that his home university has yet to recover copies of due to the originals having been destroyed in the dragon attacks decades earlier.) He hasn’t managed any other magic beyond the light, which is really kind of a relief, even if he does have a possible explanation for what might be going on. He’s also figured out that he never wants to read a wizardry text again. Surely there’s got to be some less dry and more readable way of explaining to someone what kind of weird shit they might be able to do.

He finds his way to the Keystone Pub, because the rooms are cheap, and is back up and off to the wagon’s posting again first thing in the morning. When he arrives, he’s met with a surprise: Horris, the sort-of revolutionary, is boarding up as well.

“Fancy running into you here,” Molly remarks as he climbs up into the wagon. “You going home?”

Horris looks up, surprised. “Yes, actually. I got a letter from Dolan the other day saying that it’s safe now. I’m plenty ready to be back in Zadash, that’s for sure.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“What about you, where are all those friends of yours?” Horris asks, looking around as though the rest of the Nein might be around.

“I’m meeting them in the city,” Molly says lightly. “Had an errand to run.” He scoots over as Jules appears and shoves his pack full of books up into the wagon and clambers up onto the bench. “I hear you on being ready to go back. It’s been a while.”

“Ah, hello, you two know each other?” Jules asks as he settles in.

“Not all that well,” Molly answers, and sees Horris’ briefly panicked look turn to one of gratitude. Poor man will probably still be worried about recognition for a while, what with the circumstances he left under, Molly guesses. “We just met on the road going the other way, is all. Horris had folks to visit here, I had to go a bit further down the road. Jules here is some kind of fancy scholar from Tal’dorei,” he adds to Horris, hoping to soothe any fears he might have about Imperial connections. “Now that you’re here, I can talk to you, and stop bothering him about his terribly written spellbooks.”

Jules and Horris share a glance that seems to convey something to the tune of _I guess_ , and Molly grins as the wagon begins to roll. The trip’s almost over, and he’s in decent company.

And so it goes, with plenty more conversation to pass the time for the next couple of days, until Molly can see the Tri-Spires of Zadash framing the setting sun up ahead. There are some shit memories attached to those, certainly, but they’re also a beacon of a sort, a pin on the map reaching up into the sky— he’s arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good lord, but finishing this chapter was like pulling teeth. I knew where I wanted it to end but it took me several tries to find a route to get there. Sorry for the wait, but I’ve got a better idea of where to go next from here.
> 
> So yeah, look who’s got a sorcerer level. I’m aware that dualclassing into that usually requires a higher CHA than Molly has got, but then, having all your preexisting class levels replaced with something else isn’t really a usual circumstance either. Also I just really like the Shadow Magic spec, don’t @ me. It seems pretty apt for someone who just stopped being dead and doesn’t really know why. (There’s also a bit of inspiration from Taliesin’s one interview comment about sorcerer being the other class he would have considered in there, from the “new powers who dis” standpoint.)
> 
> Jules is an expy of one of my own D&D characters because I needed some rando to be an extra passenger on the wagon; might as well make him vaguely helpful without getting him too involved in the plot for more than one chapter.


	14. Interlude: Discovery

The storm sings in Yasha’s blood, sets her hurrying on her way. She knows this is the Glory Run. She doesn’t want to be here. But she must follow the storm, the urgency that hums through her very bones. Freezing rain spurs her forward, and lightning calls on the horizon.

The storm is a thing of many moods. Rage, grief, she often finds these in the storm, but sometimes there is an exultation in it— the wildness of it on a summer night, setting the trees to shaking and the fields to flourish later. It’s tinged now with that exultation, that growth, that renewal, and she dearly wishes it was not. She does not feel these things here, does not want to, cannot.

The lightning flashes again, sets her running— how can she be close to her goal now, on this accursed road in the wilderness? What is here for her? 

She smells ozone, feels the electricity. She flings herself to the ground, throws her hands over her ears a split second before the lightning comes down just over the next hill, and her vision goes white. The Stormlord has never struck her. This is the closest the lightning has ever come. What is happening?

Ears still ringing, she pushes herself to her feet, staggers forward up the hill. When she reaches the top, she realizes where she is.

The grave is not as she left it. The coat is gone, the pole singed and splintered. Small bright flowers stubbornly poke out of the ground despite the storm, all around...

an empty hole in the ground.

Yasha runs down the hill, searches the gravesite. Nobody is here. No coat. No card. No note. She searches the hole itself, the grave. She finds it empty, but for a single silver charm.

She picks up the charm, scoops up handfuls of flowers, tucks them all away. Then she takes off at a run down the road as the rain pours down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably should have thrown this interlude in earlier, in retrospect, but I though I had a little more time to figure out what to do with Yasha. OH WELL HERE SHE COMES.


	15. Return to Zadash

Molly’s never been happier to see a town for the second time as he is coming back into Zadash. It’s an hour or so past sunset when the stage wagon rolls in, and the drivers are quick to shoo their passengers away when they arrive, eager to get a drink and a break. Molly offers his temporary traveling companions a quick goodbye, and then lets himself be shooed; he’s got places to be.

He hurries through the streets, and it seems most everyone is hurrying at this hour, not wanting to be out too late. The city is still tense in the face of what happened earlier, though there don’t seem to be troops about, at least. Still, he rushes on.

The Evening Nip is just as he remembered it, though; he could almost swear the patrons are sitting in the same spots, and the barman is cleaning the same tankard. Well, the latter bit makes sense, anyway, always another tankard to clean. “Hello, yes, here to see the Gentleman, I haven’t got money but I bring many gifts,” Molly says in a rush. He’s already heading for the secret entrance.

The barman looks up at him. “Yeah, go ahead, I’ve seen you before.” He raises a brow. “Thought I heard someone say you were dead, though.”

“People say a lot of things,” Molly tells him, and brushes past as the barman opens the door.

Any number of things could happen down in the Gentleman’s hideout, he knows. Cree could very well be there, and it’s more than likely that the Nein won’t be there themselves. But he’s got Cree’s number now, sort of, and anyway that’s not the important thing; the important thing is finding where his friends have gone. Anything and everything else comes after that. Molly grits his teeth and strides through the hideout to the Gentleman’s table, trying his best to ignore the stares of everyone else present.

The Gentleman looks up from one of his many card games at Molly’s approach, and calls out to him. “Well, now. Not every day we have a dead man walk in here.”

Molly can feel eyes on him, probably crossbows trained too, or something worse. He puts up his hands— unblemished by any kind of undead nonsense, and empty of weapons on top of it. “Yeah, well, I got better. It happens,” he says. “Probably. Listen, I’m sure you’d love to hear the story because you like to know all sorts of things, but I literally don’t know how it happened.” He’s arrived at the main table now, and stands there looking down at the Gentleman, tail swishing purposefully around his ankles, a deliberate motion to keep it from betraying his desperation with an anxious twitch. “But it was one of your jobs I died doing, so I feel like maybe you could do me a bit of a favor in return. The Nein are alive, I’m guessing, because otherwise you wouldn’t have heard that I wasn’t. Are they all right? Which ones came back, and where are they now?”

The Gentleman sighs, and holds up a hand to the players in his game, a this-will-take-a-minute kind of a gesture. “Your friends seemed whole and hale as far as I could tell,” he informs Molly. “All were there except for the aasimar, and there was a new face, a firbolg. Interesting man. I’ve given them their pay, which included yours, and they’re on their way to another errand for me down in Nicodranas.”

Molly calculates for a moment. Yasha wasn’t there, but that doesn’t mean she’s dead— somehow, foolishly, he just assumes he’d know if she were, and anyway she’s so often off on her own that her absence shouldn’t be a surprise, probably. There’s the mention of a firbolg again, and Molly hears that echoing voice in his memory— but that will have to wait until he actually finds them. “Then I’ll be joining them, of course,” he says. “What’s the job pay? I could use an advance to help me get there.”

“Well, isn’t it bold of you to simply assume that you’ll be on payroll,” the Gentleman chuckles. “Not wrong, strictly, but bold. I am not ungenerous. Given what you have apparently been through...” He brings out a pouch, and counts out four coins— platinum, Molly realizes, astonished. “That should get you started on your way. The rest, of course, will be contingent on your compatriots’ overall success.”

Molly nearly drops the coins as they’re handed to him. “Thank you,” he says, still off balance. “Any, well, any advice on how to get there?”

“I suggest you get some rest, and then hurry,” the Gentleman offers unhelpfully. “I’m sure they’ll be eager to see you return.”

Will they? And how is he going to get there? Uncertainty robs Molly of his momentum, and he tries unsuccessfully to avoid letting it show. Even knowing they probably wouldn’t be here, he hadn’t really managed to make a plan for what to do if the Nein weren’t here, much less traveling so far away. “I’ll do that, then,” he says, and begins to turn. “Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your game.”

“Very well, then, I will.” The Gentleman gives Molly a dismissing nod, and Molly turns slowly towards the door. Now that he’s found out where his friends are, his single-minded haste has vanished, leaving him daunted by the distance yet ahead. He walks dispiritedly through the passage back up into the Evening Nip.

Nicodranas will a long trip, and to be honest he’s got no idea how to get there on his own. He was hoping to maybe get a horse to speed things along, but even receiving more than he expected from the Gentleman, how much do horses even cost? Haven’t all the Nein’s been acquired through, well, theft? Winging it has gotten him this far, but it’s starting to look like this time it might be a dead end. They’ll be back, if they’re doing another job for the Gentleman, but... how long will it take, how long can he stay here?

The feeling of being entirely out of his depth sets in, welling up, distracting him, and so the arm that comes out of the darkness to hold a knife to his throat takes him entirely by surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to jump back into Episode 30 for some minutes to try and determine how much the Gentleman would pay. Whoops, made myself sad.
> 
> also :o


	16. Then and Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief POV description of an anxiety attack. If you need to skip it, go from "I'm sure. Wait here." to "What are you doing on the floor", or to '"Later," he mutters.' if you need to skip the being-brought-out-of-it bit as well.

There’s a knife at Molly’s throat. Well, shit.

“I’ve sort of got things to do, could you explain what kind of a problem you’ve got with me so that I can address it and get on with them?” he asks frantically into the dark. He tries to will the barrier into existence, but he’s not sure if it works, he’s too off balance.

“You’re not Lucien,” growls a semi-familiar female voice— oh. Gods. It’s Cree. “I would very much like to know who you are, and what you did with him, and to what end you were misleading me earlier.”

Stress either makes the words flood, or dry up. Right now it’s doing the former, so Molly just lets them flow, hoping to anyone up there who might be listening that he can come up with something convincing. “All right, you got me, fair’s fair, I’ll tell you everything if you let me go, just don’t kill me ‘cause I need to find some people first, okay? I mean, not that I know what’s going on either, mostly, your guess is as good as mine on most counts and I don’t really wanna know—“

Cree catches him by the shoulder and spins him around, shoving him into the wall. The knife is a few inches further away now. That’s good, right? She’s glaring, not that he can read tabaxi faces all that well past that. She hisses something, and Molly feels a familiar magic settle into his mind— the same truth spell Jester used. Fuck. “One question at a time,” she says. “Who are you?”

“An idiot who doesn’t know what’s going on,” Molly begins, and the knife gets closer again. “Gah! All right! Name’s Mollymauk Tealeaf, the bit about not knowing anything is true, I woke up in your Lucien’s grave two years ago and I don’t know shit about how I got there.”

Cree’s eyes narrow. “What happened to him? Are you of the leviathan? What did you do? Because I dreamed his death, and the half-orc confirmed it. How are you here?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Molly protests. “I don't even know any leviathan. All I did was wake up. His soul or whatever, that’s probably dead, I just sort of _happened_. It got trapped by some kind of ritual, and then a few weeks ago _I_ died, and I got trapped too, and then something let the both of us out, and then there were a bunch of gods and whatnot. The Raven Queen was all mad at Lucien, and then they all just sort of told me I could go, and I don’t know why!” Cree’s backed up with the knife, so he gets his hands up, palms out but maybe in position to summon the barrier and catch the knife if it comes down to it. “Honestly, you’ve got a better chance of understanding any of it than me, you know about the weird blood magic shit. I haven’t even got that anymore.”

“That tracks,” Cree mutters. “Zannah said you hadn’t recognized her, nor used your abilities. And I know you cannot lie right now.” She puts the dagger away, but her hand pinning Molly’s shoulder to the wall remains; he can feel the threat of claws in her fingertips. “You say he was trapped, and that is no longer the case?”

Molly shrugs his free shoulder. He has no idea who Zannah might be, so he focuses on the rest. “I mean, my memory of the whole being dead thing is not exactly terribly clear, but that’s what I got, yeah,” he replies. “We were— it was Lucien and me, we were stuck in this godawful little box, and we talked for a while, and then something broke the walls up— I think it was to do with another cleric, for the Wildmother. Not that I saw them, mind. And then the gods were there, and one of the Raven Queen’s guides, and the Raven Queen yelled at your friend for a bit and then they all argued for a while and I woke up. I don’t know what happened to him, but isn’t that what’s supposed to happen when you die, is you wind up with the Raven Queen...?”

“It is.” For the first time, Molly can hear the deep sorrow in Cree’s voice. “And I understand why She would be angry with him. I trusted his judgment at the time, he seemed so sure of himself, but there was always the risk that the ritual would be too great a transgression. He is truly dead, then.” Her grip tightens and shakes a little. “Why did you lie to me, when you first arrived here? Why did you tell me you were him?”

“Because I was panicking!” Molly snaps, shoulders going up around his ears. “I had no idea who you were, or who he was, or even his name, and I was scared to death of getting jumped by anyone who was friends with a guy that made his blood do freaky shit!”

“You were so sure he was so terrible?”

“Why shouldn’t I have been? I didn’t remember anything before waking up in a grave! All I knew was what kind of powers he left my body with, and that he apparently got himself killed and buried out in the middle of nowhere. What kind of good person does that, who would want to be tangled up in that shit?”

“Any weapon may be used for defense,” Cree counters. She points at Molly’s chest with her free hand. “Blood magic is a powerful weapon. As you yourself know; I see that you have more scars than he did when he died.” She sighs. “So you lied to me to save your own skin from my perceived threat. I suppose... I suppose that is not the worst reason you could have given me, though I wish... he was not so bad as you assumed.”

“I guess.” Molly’s tail twitches uncomfortably. “He seemed a better sort than I’d expected when I sort of met him, when we were both dead. But he also seemed full of shit, kind of.”

Cree snorts. “So do you, Mollymauk Tealeaf.” Her shoulders slump a little, and she lets go of him. “I do not know what I expected. I do not know how you came to be. But since you are not Lucien, and since you seem reasonably innocent given that you cannot have lied to me just now, I must tell you that you are in danger.”

“I mean, yeah, you literally just pulled a knife on me, I’d kind of assumed that part,” Molly complains as he steps away from the wall. “Or did you mean not from you?”

“Not from me,” Cree confirms. “I have received a sending... well. What do you know of the Tomb Takers?”

“Next to nothing. He ran them, you’re one of them, you’ve all got freaky blood magic. He said— when we were dead, he said something about protecting against the undead, or something. But I can’t say I entirely bought it. I’m still not convinced that anyone bent on protecting people would go straight for the blood powers to do it.”

“Desperate struggles call for desperate measures. What he told you is true.” Cree crosses her arms. “That said. I no longer believe we had the right answer in splitting away from our original Order, or in seeking the aid of other powers. If nothing else, Lucien’s fate serves as proof. There were seven of us, aside from him, all brothers and sisters in the cause, but his death drove us apart. I found my way here; others went to other cities, or vanished. But I still have contact with a few, and the one that told me she had seen you in Hupperdook told me also that she had seen the woman who performed the ritual on Lucien pass through there soon after. You are probably being followed.”

He’d been taking it all remarkably well, Molly thinks, up until that part. “Right, that’s it,” he announces, and sinks to the floor with his back to the wall. “This might be the worst day of my life. And I _died_ a couple weeks ago.” He looks up at Cree. “What does she want from me? What do _you_ want from me, and from her? You had someone spying on me in Hupperdook? Gods, I don’t even know where to start, I’ve got no idea what to do here!”

Cree stares down at him, and raises a hand— Molly flinches, expecting a spell, but she simply starts ticking off points on her fingers. “Zannah was one of the Tomb Takers. She and I don’t see eye to eye anymore, but she spotted you in Hupperdook of her own accord. She tried to verify your identity by testing your response to an attack, and contacted me on a sending stone to see if I knew there was a Lucien lookalike running around.”

“Are you— can’t a person get pickpocketed and not have it be a part of something bigger?” Molly begins despairingly as he realizes who Zannah must have been, the gnome with the knife, but Cree cuts him off, holding up a second finger.

“The woman who performed the ritual is a powerful mage. Whatever happened to separate you from Lucien, and wake you up again, I doubt it was part of her plan. She probably wishes to find out what happened, and I would not trust her to let you get away afterward. As such, I recommend you run.” She holds up a third finger. “I have no desire to make contact with that woman again, after all she convinced Lucien he could and should do. As for you...” She shakes her head, disappointment clear in her voice. “You are not him. You are not even particularly like him. He is gone and I cannot bring him back. But as I know you could not have lied to me, I know this is not your fault, and it is an injustice for you to be saddled with the burdens that Lucien piled upon himself when you have had no choice in the matter. So I am going to help you get out of here.”

Molly squints up at her, suspicious. “Why? Is that what he would have done?”

Cree sighs. “Maybe at one time, he would have,” she says regretfully. “And at another time, he would not. He changed a great deal, before the end. But that is irrelevant. It is simply what I would do, now.” She holds out a hand to pull Molly to his feet. “We leave the city tonight. Once we are on the road, we may go our separate ways. I have no intention to be easy for her to find, and you will understand if... given that you wear the face of a lost, dear friend, you will understand if I also have no desire to see you again after this.”

“That’s fair.” Molly hauls himself to his feet. “No offense, but given that you scare the shit out of me, the feeling’s mutual. When are we leaving, what direction are we leaving, how are we leaving?”

“We go south, as you wish to rejoin the Mighty Nein. And we go now, or at least, as soon as I have explained to my employer. I am sure the Gentleman will allow me to depart for a time, as he does not wish this kind of threat to his business either, but I doubt he will grant me any extra coin, so... as for how, we will improvise.”

Molly tries to put on his usual shit-eating grin, but winds up on a grimace. “Oh, good. Right. Yeah. I’m good at that.”

Cree snorts. “I’m sure. Wait here.”

She leaves him standing in the dark of the passageway as she steps into the Gentleman’s hideout, and as soon as she’s out of sight he sits down against the wall again, shaking. All that he knows of Lucien now, from actually talking to the guy, and this still is way too much. Cree finding him out? Cree helping him regardless because Lucien’s old necromancer buddy is probably after the both of them? The other Tomb Takers apparently recognizing his face when he’s not paying attention? Some kind of leviathan everyone keeps mentioning? This is too much. He wishes the others— no, they don’t deserve his bullshit— but he wishes at least that Yasha were here. Give him a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of it all both alive and without having a total meltdown.

He hadn’t been afraid to die the first time, is the thing— he’d had a purpose, friends to protect. But now he’s got nobody, if this catches up with him, and “asshole predecessor’s asshole accomplice wants to probably steal my soul or something” is much lower on his list of acceptable reasons to die than “this fucker is going to kill my jerk friend if I don’t do something.” And judging by how the last time he died turned out, this mage can do much worse than kill him. And the cities evidently aren’t safe from Lucien’s old friends spotting him and pulling weapons on him, and he’s worked out that he’s completely useless in the wilderness, and if he dies out there trying to run nobody will know, and— fuck, he should just run, he should just run but at this point he realizes he can’t even move—

“What are you doing on the floor again?”

Cree’s voice seems oddly distant, and he doesn’t even bother to look up at her until her hands come down on his shoulders, firm but not harsh like before. “Look at me, Lucien, are you all ri— hells.” She sighs. “Mollymauk Tealeaf.” It’s strange to hear his name in Cree’s voice, strange enough to jar him into at least looking at her. Her face is still hard to read, but her gaze is far softer than before, maybe sadder. “Look at me,” she repeats. “You are shaking. Are you ill, or are you panicking?”

Molly shakes his head. Now that he’s stopped talking, it’s hard to start again. But Cree is looking at him expectantly, and her hands on his shoulders are weighing him down a little, keeping him from spiraling away. “Second one,” he croaks, and then stops trying to talk.

Cree drops to a crouch in front of him, hands still on his shoulders. “You truly lack his memories,” she murmurs. “And with them, any preparation for what we got ourselves into. I think I understand why you are terrified.” And then, one shock on top of another, she gives him a hug, arms wrapping tight around his shoulders for a moment. He leans into it despite himself, because this is the first proper contact he’s had with another person since Nila carried him, and gods, he needs it.

Cree keeps talking into his ear. “I need you to listen to me, Mollymauk Tealeaf. We need to leave now if we are going to escape notice. I made it this far with what I had left. You made it this far with even less. We will escape now, and then you will have time to sort out what all of this means to you.” She breaks away and pulls him once more to his feet; he follows along without resisting.

“Later,” he mutters. Like he said, once.

“Exactly. Follow me,” Cree says. She leads him back into the hideout, then stops in front of the door to the sewer passages.

“It will be fastest if we go through the sewers. Though I am afraid I will have to blindfold you for that.”

Molly shrugs. “Might as well.” He’s still shaky, but Cree’s hand is steady on his arm, and if she’s about to lead him wrong, well, better the devil he sort of vaguely knows. He can follow along for now, at least. “You don’t do that magic blindness thing that he could?” he asks quietly as she fastens a scarf over his eyes, and begins to lead him through the awful- smelling tunnels.

“Not in the same way. I am a cleric, not a hunter.”

Molly pauses, incredulous. “Cleric? Of who?”

“The Raven Queen. She who taught the hunters their craft as well. It is a dark art, but not an evil one.”

“Her again, huh.” Molly’s silent for a moment as Cree leads him onward. “She’s, ah, the one that took his magic away from me. Said it was forfeit, given what he’d done and what I’d never done. Seemed fair to me.”

“I see.” Cree’s voice goes distant and sad. “She is not merciful. Neither is She needlessly cruel. Whatever becomes of Lucien’s spirit... it will be part of the order of things, I suppose. I only wish I had not gotten my hopes up.”

Molly tenses. Is this the part where she gets angry with him? he wonders. Is this the part where she expects him to be sorry for taking Lucien’s place? He’s only ever been sure of one thing, and it’s that he doesn’t owe anyone an apology for his existence. He readies a retort, and another try at the warding spell for good measure, as Cree stops in her tracks.

But she only removes the blindfold, and looks up at him. “She would not have let you come back without a reason. I am not sure about you yet, but I trust Her judgment. Come on. Time to go back up.”

Cree gracefully hops up a ladder and out into a quiet street. Molly clambers up behind her, looking around warily. She’s brought him to the temples, he realizes, the nearest one so gloomy it can only be the Raven Queen’s. Not that the others are much cheerier; the guard seems heavier here. “Y’know, it’s enough to make a person want to run away, if you insist on catching up with him again and again like that,” he mutters to the air.

“What was that?” Cree asks up ahead.

“Nothing. Just that this isn’t the first time I’ve been to one of Her temples since I woke up. Stopped by the one in Hupperdook to say thanks, I guess, and now you’ve brought me here.”

“Not for any related reason, I assure you.” Cree fumbles with her belt pouch, and finally produces a holy symbol. “I simply wish to see if they have any travel supplies to spare for one of their own. This way.”

She leads him in through a side entrance. There’s a narrow corridor, well enough lit for a human to walk without difficulty; this is not the temple’s sanctum, but a passage for those who live in its attendance. Cree navigates with only mild uncertainty, as though she’s only been back here once or twice before, but seems satisfied with the door she eventually arrives at. Molly hangs back as she knocks politely.

“Who is it?” a distant voice comes from inside.

As Cree opens her mouth to answer, a nearer voice speaks up. “Looks like that little Claret deserter freak.”

“Leave us be, then,” calls the first voice. “We want nothing to do with your criminal dealings.”

“I need your help—“ Cree begins.

“My help is that I do not call the Crownsguard on you right now,” says the voice, drawing closer to the door. “We cannot give you anything without risking ourselves. Go.”

Cree bristles, but turns away from the door and slumps off down the hall, gesturing for Molly to follow. Once they’re out of earshot of the door, she turns toward him. “Well, that didn’t work. Tell me, how do you feel about horse theft?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If memory serves, at least one of the other Tomb Takers went down at the Empire's hands. Oop.
> 
> 10/8 update: some minor edits dealing with new things in the backstory theory.


	17. Inevitable Stealth Mission

“Has anyone ever told you that your moral code is a little bit nonsensical?” Cree grumbles quietly as Molly palms a couple of the platinum coins that the Gentleman had given him. They’re tucked into an alleyway, Cree nosing out slightly and keeping an eye on a livery stable around the corner.

“I mean, I’ve only had two years to come up with it,” he retorts in an undertone. The livery is probably a rich enough outfit to be able to afford the loss it’s about to take, but it’s probably the hired hands that will suffer for it. He figures he could stand to help them out with that. "You get them yet?"

“Not yet. I have to wait for them to get close enough together—“ She stretches out a faintly glowing hand as the two night guards round the corner. “Okay, now! Go!" She leaps forward as both guards hit the ground, snoring gently.

Molly runs forward, tossing a coin in the dirt next to each guard as he goes, and ducks into the barn. Cree’s a few paces ahead of him, and a few of the drowsing horses already seem unhappy about it. He supposes it’s entirely possible that from their perspective, some sort of huge panther just ran into their house.

“Can you put those to sleep, too?” he hisses as a terrified whinny rings out down the aisle. He shoves open the stall of what looks like it's probably one of the faster ones. Cree has already found a couple of saddles, so he runs to take one from her; once she has a hand free she throws it out again and the neighing falls silent. A couple of loud thuds sound down the corridor as the suddenly fast-asleep animals lose their balance. “Shit. That could've been quieter."

“Just move,” Cree whispers. The horse she’s chosen is straining at its cross-ties, resisting her attempts to saddle it. “Before the guards wake.”

Molly slings the saddle over his horse’s back and buckles it on with some difficulty. Before he can even think about getting the bridle on, there’s a shout from the direction of the guards. “Ey, what the hell—“

Molly ducks out of the way as Cree flings another sleep spell down the hall, and the guard falls into the dirt again. His horse is fidgeting because of Cree, and hers is even less cooperative. He’s got an idea.

“All right, you big, scaredy prey animals,” he begins in a low voice, weaving a bit of the magic he knows he still has into the words. “All eyes on me, now, watch me being completely harmless, yeah, pay no attention to the scary cat lady, she’s not gonna eat you, that would be pretty useless, hey? Just settle down, and hold still, and all that good stuff, and we’ll be out of most of your hair, and you can go back to doing whatever horse things you do in the middle of the night, I dunno, do you fuckers even sleep that much?” As he keeps up the stream of prattle, he gets the bridle over his horse’s head. It's a little different than the ones the circus used for the cart-horses, but he thinks he can probably figure it out. Cree’s horse is standing stock-still, staring at him as he talks, and Cree gives him a nod as she fits the bridle onto it.

“You guys have no reason to find me threatening, y'know, everything else you probably know with horns is like sheep and goats and shit, none of you lot know what fiends are so I probably look pretty friendly, right? Shit, I don’t know how horses work. All eyes on me, still, you’re paying attention, right? Quick poll, all of you, what kind of bathroom should I name your brother here after?” He sees Cree swing up into the saddle, and does the same. Just as well, he can’t keep up the effect much longer. “All right, silent crowd, that’s fair, you’re a bunch of damned horses. We’re good? We’re good.” And he rides inexpertly down the aisle, hoping that Cree’s horse is sufficiently calm that it won’t suddenly object to her presence on its back once he shuts up. Unfortunately that’s not the only possible problem.

“Oi! Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” The guards are up again, and in a split-second decision, Molly calls up more magic.

“Easy, boys, we just needed to make an emergency rental,” he says, trying to sound as friendly as possible. “Bit of a sudden thing came up, but look, we’ve already paid, see? And with how hard you work, who can fault you for taking a quick nap?”

The one is hanging on his every word, and moves out of the way. The other seems unconvinced, like the charm hasn’t taken hold. “There’s a process for this kind of thing, you can’t just—“ he begins, but Molly shushes him and gestures to the platinum on the ground.

“We’re paid up, aren't we? So you can just handle the rest of the process, and we’ll be on our way.”

He can practically see the calculations running on an abacus behind the guard’s eyes. “All right, and how long did you need those for?”

Cree rides up alongside Molly, out into the street. “Don’t worry about it,” she says, and waves a hand again. For a third time, the guard falls snoring to the ground. “Let’s go.”

Molly lets her take the lead, and they make their way through the streets at a brisk trot, his rush job with the tack holding at least for now. “You should have let me handle the both of them,” she says over her shoulder. “I can do that more times than you.”

“What, you knew I could do that?”

“Sure. Lucien used it plenty. But tiefling magic is quite limited on its own, if you don’t have another source to draw on.” She shakes her head. “The charm would have been useful for the guards at the city gates. Putting them to sleep will probably raise an alarm; we will have to get creative. Have you got any other magic besides that?”

“Nothing terribly fancy. I can make a few sparks or lights or what have you, and I can shield against blades, but that’s it. It’s all new to me.” Molly snorts. “Again.”

“That’s a distraction, at least. Let’s see what we can cook up.”

 

* * *

 

This is one of the quieter gates, and Guardswoman Morraine Bensom is really hoping her transfer to a different posting will go through soon, because otherwise she’s going to fall asleep on the job and get in trouble for it one of these days.

It’s so quiet that it’s just her and the other guy, Daveth, and no reinforcements, because nobody comes through this sleepy-ass district, precisely nobody who would ever feel like leaving the city even on legitimate terms lives here. Just semi-well-to-do and incredibly proper civilian homes as far as you can see down the street, and the worst trouble is always just someone’s teenager on a bit of a bender that gets cleared up just fine in the morning.

...What’s that smell, though?

While she puzzles over the odd scent in the air, a clatter of metal sounds down a nearby alley, followed by the disgruntled screech of an alley cat. “What in the...?” Daveth starts foward, towards the source of the noise.

“Aw, come on, Dave, it’s just some cats having a scrap,” Morraine complains. “Don’t abandon your post for that, captain’ll be all over our asses for it.”

“No, there’s something else, do you smell that? Look, there’s some kinda light down there—“

“Not our job. We can have someone along for it, if you’re dead set.”

 _You should really go check that out. It could be a threat. Bring your backup. You would be heroes._ The words slide unbidden into Morraine’s head, and somehow they seem exactly right, even though she doesn’t want to be a hero, she mostly wants to be paid and home. “We should go check it out,” she says obligingly. “Might be dangerous.”

Daveth squints at her, unsure of her sudden change of heart, and nods. “Don’t want anything blowing up on our watch.” He waits for Morraine.

She strides forward confidently, propelled by the words, following the source of the sound into the alleyway. There’s a little metal thing on the ground, no bigger than an egg, fizzing and sparking and emitting peculiar-smelling smoke. _Ask him if he knows what it is. He should come look at it._ “Here, look at this. Any idea what it is?” she calls back to him.

Daveth runs over to her with a torch, leaning over her shoulder. Their armor knocks together, but makes no sound, and she can’t hear what he says in response for a few moments. “What’d you say?” She can’t hear herself, either, or anything else—

—And suddenly the night sounds are back. “Morra? Morra?” Daveth waves a hand in her face, then tugs her shoulder. “Did it hypnotize you? Why can’t you talk? What the fuck’s going on?”

The words are gone, too, as though they were never there. “No, I can talk,” she says, and shakes her head. “Think it deafened us for a minute? What is this shit? We better call somebody.”

Neither notice the galloping hoofbeats growing farther and farther away as they rush to find backup.

 

* * *

 

 

Once they’re far enough past the gates of Zadash that Cree’s called a slow, Molly looks over and pulls a face at her. He’d be feeling pretty satisfied right now with the little distraction he’d conjured up with his newfound prestidigitation, but the heebie-jeebies of Cree’s addition to it are taking precedence. “What exactly was that, back there? That was just a little bit fucked up!”

She looks back at him, seemingly surprised. “The spell to dominate? You’ve seen me use that before, plenty of— oh.” She screws up her face. “No, you haven’t. Still, it is only a spell in the same vein as your own abilities, merely stronger.”

“Oh come on, I can’t do big detailed things like that, I can’t control people. Which you just did.”

“You can make them do small things, which may have just as big of an impact depending on the situation.” She looks ahead again. “It is not the only one of either of our abilities to be ‘fucked up’, as you put it. But I only use it when it is necessary. As you did earlier.”

She’s... not wrong, actually. If he thinks about it, which he doesn’t want to. He mutters wordlessly and rides on.

They go on in uncomfortable silence for another mile or so before Molly reins his horse to a halt. “Aren’t we supposed to be splitting up, or something?”

“That is the plan.” Cree pulls to a stop as well. “It may be wise to camp first and part ways in the morning, though.” Her ears twitch back. “Are you wishing to do so now that you’ve seen my magic in use?”

There’s no use denying it, Molly thinks. “Kinda, yeah.”

She looks at him levelly. “Why?”

“It’s creepy! You just made that guard do everything you wanted her to! And you’re obviously good at it, you’ve got practice,” he adds. “No offense, but that doesn’t really inspire trust.”

“And you do?” Cree flicks an ear in annoyance. “There are circumstances in which I am willing to command someone like that. All have to do either with my own survival or with combating the undead. Or with others’ survival, as I also helped you escape, and with no harm to anyone along the way. Just because I am granted an ability does not mean I assume no restrictions on using it. Do you? Would you not have charmed the guards had I not done that?”

“I... Argh. I guess that’s fair.” Molly sighs. “I suppose I never really thought about it too hard. Still, though. It’s creepy.”

Cree shrugs. “You aren’t wrong. But you should think about that.” She looks around. “It will be safer if we do not split up until morning. I have no reason to use this magic on you, I promise.”

Molly gives her a hard look. “Not even for finding out more about Lucien, or whatever?”

Cree’s tail lashes once in frustration before she stills it and has to soothe her horse, now roughly accepting of her presence but still on edge. “I could use Zone of Truth if there was anything more I wished to hear from you about him,” she says. “It is abundantly clear that you are not him, and he is gone. I am not foolish enough to think there is anything I can do about that.” She swings down from the saddle. “ _Camp_ , Mollymauk. Queen’s mantle, I’m just trying to do my due diligence so you don’t get killed in your sleep your first night on the run.”

Molly debates for a moment, then begrudgingly dismounts. One less night alone is probably a good thing, and, well, if Cree wanted to turn on him she obviously could have done it already. “All right. I’m getting too tired to argue anyway.”

“Then you can have second watch.” Cree finds a small tree to tether the horses’ halters to, and indicates where Molly ought to set up his things. She no longer seems to be in the mood to talk.

He lays out his bedroll and stretches out. The creeping exhaustion of the road is catching up with him fast. He sees Cree sit down by the tree, looking unhappily out towards the road, and then sleep takes him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What with all the shenanigans the rest of the party have been getting into, we were about due for some, even if I couldn’t figure out how these two would get as fully ridiculous as the others. (Give Molly time.) Is the measurement for shenanigans now the number of spells your cleric has to use to pull it off? It might be.
> 
> Other fun questions: can I remember how long it takes to tack up a horse (not quite, but I’m fairly sure longer than Enthrall lasts unless you’re real good at it), do tabaxi naturally scare horses (I’m gonna go with yeah), does Enthrall require the target to understand any languages (no! thank goodness), am I tracking spell slots while writing this (absolutely), when will these two jerks stop having a pot-kettle hypocrisy fight and actually think about the ramifications of their mind-control magic properly (lord only knows.)


	18. Interlude: A Step Behind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we certainly got a bunch of backstory speculation handed to us during the live show on Thursday. I've made some small edits to prior chapters to reflect that (as well as general proofreading.)

The woman paces the length of her study. The Blooming Grove had been empty; she’s not sure whether to take that as a sign of connection with the incident or not. She took various objects from the house, knowing that a whole family had once lived there, but thus far, each one she has scried upon has been on a seemingly unrelated trek in a variety of faraway locales— each that the spell could find purchase on, at least. Several of them have proved resistant to it— strong-willed, it seems.

She only has so many scrolls with which to travel quickly; she can only scry so many times per day. And she is only afforded so much time for her own research, outside of her other duties in Rexxentrum. She’ll keep looking into the firbolgs as she goes, but she must chase her other lead.

She’d heard things in Zadash, about a year back. A couple of acolytes of the Matron of Ravens, grousing about some sacrilege, some criminal element that carried the same holy symbol as they did. They’d thought nobody was listening, but then, she’s good at convincing people of that. She’ll start there.

The candlelight in the hall tells her that it is already night, as she leaves her study, satchel of components over her shoulder. No matter. She has the clearance to go where she wants, at this hour, even as the guard on duty outside the Hall of Transit looks at her, puzzled. “Where are you going so late, ma’am?”

“Out.” She brushes past him, cloak swirling in her wake.

A few minutes later, she stands on the Zauber Spire’s observation platform, looking down. Somewhere in this city, there are answers waiting for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like a recalculating GPS with all this backstory stuff coming up. Or the IASIP Pepe Silvia image macro, despite never having watched the show. Anyway I think I know where I'm going... for now. I also caught the office cold something fierce so it might be a bit before the next update but let's hope not.


	19. Leaving So Soon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND WE’RE BACK. Sorry for the update slip, folks, work got out of hand. I’m mostly recovered now and rest assured that if it happens again I still don’t have any intention of dropping this fic for good.

It hardly feels like any time’s passed when Cree wakes Molly for his watch, and he realizes as he gets up that it must have been pretty late when they stopped for the night. He settles down next to the tree as she crawls into her bedroll, and scans the area. So far, so good. Nothing but the noises of the wild, and the quiet crunch of one of the horses grazing as the other rests a foot and dozes. Still, he calls up his stronger barrier, just in case. He can’t deny things have gotten the jump on him before.

In a few hours the sky begins to slowly lighten, and in the faint predawn glow the road becomes a little more familiar. Cree’s got him on the way to Alfield, the way he needs to be going. He realizes with some alarm that he’s gotten this far without much sense of direction; he’s been pointed along by someone every step of the way. How long will that hold before he gets lost or misled?

He looks over Cree, apparently sound asleep now. Honestly, he has no idea what to make of her at this point. She’s helped him so far, even knowing that he’s not her old lost friend, snapped him out of his panic and whisked him out of the city before any pursuit can catch up, kept watch while he rested. She also collects blood samples for a crime boss, went along with whatever Lucien did even though she didn’t like it, and controls people without regret when she needs them out of the way. ( _So do you_ , says part of his conscience, but he’s got more pressing worries at the moment, he thinks.) What are her real intentions? Is she going to track him, once they part ways? Should he leave now while he can?

The first few rays of sunlight break the horizon, and Molly shakes his head. She looked out for him; fair’s fair, you don’t leave someone alone on the road if they’re counting on you. It’s one of the first things Gustav taught him, and consequently one of the first things he knows. He burrows into his coat a little more in the morning chill and gazes back out over the road. He’s paying attention. Mostly.

And soon enough, Cree’s waking again, with a fluid stretch that rolls through her whole body as she pushes herself up out of her bedroll. She blinks slowly in the sun, taking in the campsite, the horses, Molly— and as her gaze falls on him she freezes, shakes herself, sighs.

“Good morning,” he says, uncertain. Cree doesn’t respond, but begins to go through the motions of packing up her bedroll. Molly fidgets in awkward silence.

“Have you got food for the road?” Cree finally asks. She’s packed up her few belongings already, tacked up her horse, and is pretty much ready to go. She’s still not looking at him.

“Yeah. Have you?”

“Yes.” Cree looks toward him, but her glance lands somewhere past his left shoulder. “Forgive me. It is... disorienting to wake up and think for a moment that I am back with the others.”

“Understandable.” Cree’s discomfort is infectious; Molly wants to be anywhere but here now. He’s definitely not in the mood for dealing with the whole missing-Lucien thing. He begins to take stock of what he needs to pack up himself. “You just going to leave, then?”

“I think that would be best. Unless there is more you wish to talk about. I... there is much I wish to know, but I do not think you know the answers, and to ask would probably just be distressing to the both of us.”

“Yeah, I’m, ah, fine without that, I think.” Molly sits quiet for a moment before it becomes clear that Cree isn’t going to carry the conversation further. “Thanks for everything, let’s just head out before it all gets weird again.”

Cree’s gaze makes its way back to Molly’s face, unflinching now. “Be... be careful out there, Mollymauk. Your friends will be glad for it.”

“I’ll make an attempt at that.” Molly finishes rolling up his own bedroll, then sighs, looks up. “I’m not— I’m not sorry to be back. But you’ve got my condolences, weird as it sounds. Weird as it feels to say it, too.”

“That does sound pretty weird.” Cree turns away, takes the reins of her horse. “But thank you.”

And she leaves, carrying her unspoken memories and grief with her. Nott would be disappointed that he hadn’t found out more, Molly thinks. Well, Nott’s going to have to satisfy herself with the fact that he’s alive, because he really doesn’t feel like chasing Cree down to ask the rest.

On the other hand, he’s on the right road to actually find Nott again, and everyone else. He chews through a portion of trail rations, then saddles his own horse. He’s getting closer. Time to keep going.

 

* * *

 

The day goes smoothly enough, and he makes good progress towards Alfield. He finds that camping alone is easier even with just a horse for company— the creature seems pretty content to listen to him ramble through the day, and has at least some chance of waking him up in the night if something comes along. A horse on watch is better than no watch at all, certainly, and it doesn’t seem to sleep as much as he does.

The road is again uncrowded, and he only passes a couple of travelers going the other way on the first day. Midway through the second day, though, someone up the road catches his eye— a familiar gait, a familiar frame. Molly nudges the horse to amble forward a bit faster until he finally gets close enough to make out the man’s features. A grin spreads across his face, and he calls out. “Hey! That you, Gustav?”

“Mollymauk?” The approaching traveler stops in his tracks, and Molly hops down from the saddle and rushes forward. The ringmaster’s coat is faded and in poor repair, he’s a bit pale and haggard, and he looks out of place without a ring or a group around him, but sure enough, it’s Gustav. Molly catches a quick glance of his shocked, seen-a-ghost expression before nearly bowling him off his feet with a hug.

“Gustav! They let you leave!”

“Yes, they did,” Gustav replies shakily. He steps back and looks over Molly as he’s released from the hug. “Are you—? Molly, the people you left with came by and said you were dead. Were they lying? Did they just leave you behind?”

Molly shifts his weight uncomfortably. “No, they weren’t,” he admits. “S’not the first time. I just sort of.. woke up again the way I did before you found me, only I remembered a bit more this time. You’ll understand if I don’t really want to dwell on that.”

“That’s fair.” A bit of a smile is beginning to creep onto Gustav’s careworn face. “Whatever it was, I’m glad to see you again. Glad you remember me, too. And I’ve got to thank you, since they used your money to pay off part of the debt. Have you seen Yasha about? She wasn’t with them, either.”

“Not yet. She’s just off doing her thing, I hope.” Molly sighs. “We got into some bad trouble up by Shady Creek Run. I heard she made it out all right, but I haven’t heard any news of her since.”

Gustav goes even paler for a moment, but then seems to steel himself, if only for Molly’s sake. “Well, if she got out of there all right, I’m sure she’s fine now, too,” he says. “The rest of them just passed through Trostenwald a few days ago, delivered the news about you and bail me out. God, but it’s good to know they were mistaken. Are you trying to catch up with them, then?”

“That’s the plan. But what about you, where are you headed? Going to Nicodranas to catch up with Ornna, or have you heard anything about where Desmond might’ve gone?” Molly asks hopefully.

But Gustav shakes his head. “I’ve got some business up north I’ve got to deal with. Maybe after it’s done I’ll look for the others, but I shouldn’t be running the show anymore, in any case. Ornna was right about that.”

Molly flicks his tail back and forth around his ankles in consternation. He’s only just found Gustav again, and can’t seem to keep him from leaving. “You sure? I’m following the Nein to Nicodranas, you could come with. I’m sure they’d love to see you. Well, Ornna would gripe, but you know she doesn’t actually hate you.”

“There’s no place for me there now. And...” Gustav sighs. “It’s past time I put this other matter to rest, I’m told. You should try and find them, though. Let them know you’re all right.” He puts his hands on Molly’s shoulders as they begin to droop in disappointment. “Don’t get me wrong, now. I’ve missed you all dearly. But it’s my fault we all got split up. You’re the one that should get to see them now.”

“ _Should_ nothing, you’re the one went into debt for the rest of us—“ Molly throws up his hands in resignation. “I won’t keep trying to make you come with if you don’t want to go. Just... maybe can we stay here for a bit longer, then, and catch up? I haven’t seen anyone in ages, and you in even longer.”

Gustav smiles, only a little sadly. “That, I can certainly do. Let’s sit, and you can tell me about some of your better adventures.”

 

* * *

 

It costs a few hours of travel to sit and swap stories, but all the same as Molly leaves Gustav with another rib-cracking hug and they head in their opposite directions, he wishes it had been longer. Gustav had clearly needed the smiles brought by the stories of Hupperdook, and Kiri, and the better parts of the Festival, and Molly still needs the company. But there’s nothing forward, he supposes, but to hurry on towards the Nein.

He rides into Alfield late, but the still-rebuilding town receives him well enough anyway. Bryce is shocked to see him, having gotten the same news as Gustav, but they’re glad all the same, and only pry a little more than Gustav had. He eats with them and a handful of appreciative townsfolk, warmed by the food and conversation as much as the tavern’s fire. They insist on finding him an inn free of charge, despite all his protests, so he leaves some coin on the innkeeper’s desk while nobody is looking.

He’s tired from the road, but as he lays out his swords and tries to get ready for sleep, Molly finds he can hardly slow his thoughts down. A few days ago in Trostenwald, Gustav had said. He’s close to the others, so close. He can hardly wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Molly’s allergy to introspection about his actions is going to get him in trouble one of these days.  
> \- Maaaaaatt what was Gustav’s deal MAAAATTTT TAAAAL ANYONE. Seriously what in the HECK did Caduceus mind-read, I’m so dang curious.  
> \- Rereading some of the early transcripts to write the Gustav bit caused some ow. I’d forgotten that Ornna, Bo, and Toya had plans of heading to Nicodranas. I have trepidation.  
> \- This fic was always going to lose plausible deniability canon-compliance sooner or later as far as rejoining the party goes, rather than having Molly reach them at some vague timeline point way past what’s currently going on in the game. We’re getting into the “sooner” territory, at this point. And that’s all there is to say on the matter for now.


	20. Found Again

He’d talked to Bryce over breakfast, one last chat before leaving town again. They’d asked Molly about his plans, about papers for the border crossing out of the Empire.

“I, er, lost them,” he’d said, and it had been true enough, for all they’d been forgeries in the first place. Asking Gustav for replacements had hardly been a priority yesterday.

Bryce’s eyes had gone up to scrutinize the rafters, at that. They were a smart person, Molly knew, and good enough that he didn’t want to insult them with a bribe. But after a moment, they’d just shaken their head, and looked back to him.

“Given that you helped save the town, I suppose I can trust you to give me accurate information to write you up a passport with.”

He’d known what they meant.

So here he is now, riding out to Trostenwald, with Bryce’s signature on his new papers and their promise to let Yasha know he’s alive if she turns up easing his heart. He doesn’t expect such a welcome in Trostenwald, but he doesn’t intend to stay long, either. It’s not too far from there to the imperial border...

He wonders what it will be like, outside. As far as he knows, he’s never been, discounting the vague border status of the Run. Jester and Fjord are both from the Menagerie Coast, near the sea, places he’s only ever heard (and retold) stories about. What exactly is the sea like, anyway? He thinks of the biggest lake he’s ever seen, tries to stretch it out— adds Jester and Beau horsing around on the shore, Caleb off to the side somewhere with his nose buried in a book and Nott sitting behind him facing resolutely away from the water, Fjord halfway submerged doing his weird Fjord shit...

Pounding hoofbeats cut into the daydream, and Molly gets his eyes back on the road just as his horse startles and shies away from the rider charging straight toward him.

He’s not in time to keep from losing his balance in the saddle, but he at least catches himself enough to get his feet free and land in a crouch. He makes a hasty grab for his scimitar. The attacker is alone, masked and scruffy but well-equipped, and already has a sword drawn as he rides closer. “None of that, now,” he drawls. “I’ll be taking that blade, the jewelry, and any money and valuables what you might have, if’n you want to get where you’re going alive. Leave ‘em on the ground, now.”

Molly calculates: this guy’s taller than him, still mounted, longer sword, better reach. Little to no chance of talking him down nicely. Time to cheat like a motherfucker. He snarls back in Infernal. “Not a chance, you ass.”

The magic in the words is enough to send the robber swaying in the saddle. Molly gives the horse a good smack on the shoulder with his free hand, sending it bolting and the man tumbling to the ground. He recovers all too quickly, though, lunges at Molly with his sword. Molly parries the first hit, but isn't able to dodge back in time to keep the second swing from laying a gash into his thigh.

He stumbles back onto his good leg, flings out a hand. Ice crusts around the highwayman’s ankles, but just as soon cracks and falls away— huh, weird, hadn’t expected that to work— and his opponent’s pressing forward again, lays into Molly’s outstretched arm this time, then misses as Molly continues to scramble backward. This is not good. No backup, no warning, nothing to give him the advantage.

Molly changes tactics and lunges under the too-high sword swing, catches the highwayman across the abdomen with his scimitar. The cheap blade doesn’t make it past the man’s leather armor, though it does appear to knock some of his wind out, but he parries Molly’s next strike anyway. 

Then the sword flashes up, trailing a thin line across Molly’s chest before the highwayman drives it deep into his shoulder.

He feels the blood welling up, just like last time, but oh gods, he can’t die yet now, he’s so close. “Not _now_ , damn you!” he snarls, and grabs the blade by the flat, shoves it out by instinct— no, wrong instinct, _bad_ instinct, fuck, that’s going to bleed, he’s signed his own death warrant—

The fleeting moment stretches, somehow. Silent. Still. Everything goes cold except for the wound. There’s a warmth to it, almost uncomfortable— poison? Is this it, again?

Everything comes roaring back into focus, and as time begins to move again he sees the wound in his shoulder. It’s _sealed_ itself.

Not now, he thinks faintly. Not this time.

“What in the Nine Hells,” the highwayman bites out.

Molly flashes him the sharpest of grins as he uses the moment of uncertainty to wrest the sword away, flip it around, and catch it. The situation’s somehow turned in his favor, and he’s recovered his balance, at least for the moment. “Takes more than the likes of you to kill me again, friend. Bye now.”

He raises the sword, but the highwayman turns to flee, unarmed and properly spooked by a victim who refuses to die. Molly’s not nearly quick enough to follow in his current state, so he lets the sword drop, leans on it for support. There’s no need to finish this, anyway.

But the man doesn’t get far as Molly watches him run: from the road, a newcomer has joined the fight. A terrible scream fills the air, and the highwayman jerks and goes still on the end of a greatsword, stopped in his tracks for the last time. The sword’s wielder shakes the corpse off her blade as though he weighs nothing, then immediately turns and runs to Molly. Strong arms catch him, lift him up, and he splutters in punch-drunk surprise as he works out who’s got him. 

“Yasha. Amazing timing,” he says vaguely, head swimming now with the blood loss, as she pulls him in close. She’s warm, and her hands on his back and shoulder are warmer. He feels her small measure of healing magic course through him, pulling the wounds shut and leaving him sore and lightheaded but whole. It’s really her, he realizes, she’s really here, she’s got him. He wriggles out of her grip enough to get his arms around her, and leans his head more comfortably on her shoulder. She’s shaking, though she begins to still as he returns her embrace. “I missed you so much,” he mumbles into her shawl, “so much, gods, I just—“

And then he’s just crying, and so is she, and she sets him gently on his feet and they both just sit down on the side of the road, clinging to each other like either might fly away if untethered. Molly feels Yasha’s heartbeat thudding in her chest, she’s here, she’s here, she’s here, and she’s holding him so tightly he might break but if she lets go he _definitely_ will. “You found me,” he manages as he tries to catch his breath again, and then fails as his shoulders hitch and he shoves his face even closer against her shoulder.

“It’s really you?” Yasha manages finally, after several more moments. “You’re really here? Molly, you _died_ —“

“I’m really here,” Molly assures her, and finally begins to relax, “I’m back.” He pulls back to give her a watery grin before settling against her again. “You know me. Hard to get rid of. Bullshit my way out of everything.”

“You asshole,” Yasha snaps, and she actually sounds angry, though she hasn’t let go. “Don’t joke about it. They lost you.” She shudders again. “I lost you. And then I finally found you and you’re almost dead again. _Don’t._ ”

Molly winces and curls in tighter against her again. “Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean— gods, I don’t even know how it happened, I’m just— I’m back. You found me,” he repeats wonderingly, because even he still can’t quite believe it.

“I always will.”

They sit like that a while longer, all wound together and unable to say more. They’re both in shock, really, even if it’s mixed with joy, and it’s hard to do much but hold on and sort themselves out. Molly’s alive, he just pulled another spell he doesn’t know out of nowhere and then bounced back from the brink of death for no apparent reason, Yasha’s here, he’s not alone anymore, it’s a lot to unpack.

Eventually the sound of an approaching cart down the road breaks the silence. “Guess we probably shouldn’t just sit here all afternoon,” Molly says, tired but far calmer than before. “I was going to Nicodranas, to find the others— the Gentleman said they were headed there. Can you... will he let you come with?”

“Yes. I have somewhere I have to go, but Nicodranas is on the way. I'll come with you.” Yasha gets to her feet and holds out a hand to haul Molly up to his, and once he’s up he’s immediately stuck to her like glue again, hugging her tight. She rests her chin on top of his head and lets him cling. After a moment she laughs softly. “We’re not going anywhere like this,” she points out. “Unless you want me to carry you.”

Molly grumblingly detaches himself, but he’s too happy to even feign annoyance for long. “I'm just glad you can actually come with. No need to carry me, we’ll take the horse. Horses, I suppose, he’s not using his now.” He looks over to the highwayman’s horse, now grazing far off the side of the road. “Handy, that.”

Yasha looks at the horses thoughtfully. “Yes. I hope they’ll make it through the mountains.”

“Mountains?” Molly thinks back to the maps Bryce had shown him, the flat road through a long valley. Now he’s not sure he read it right.

Yasha nods, gazing into the distance off the road. “There’s a shorter route. No checkpoint. He showed me the way. ...I don’t think He’ll mind me bringing you with me.”

Molly shivers. “Good to know I’m in so many divine good graces,” he says uncomfortably before shrugging it off. “However the hell that happened. Come on, then, let’s catch the horses.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aw hell yeah I get to add that friendship tag now. LADIES, GENTLEMEN, AND VARIATIONS THEREUPON, WE ARE OFFICIALLY OFF THE RAILS AND I’M LIVING.
> 
> Actually I’m not sure about the very end of that because of all the smoke I’ve breathed over the past week, but well, yknow. (NorCal wildfires. I’m not in danger of actually being on fire, but I’ve been feeling ill even with P95 masks and air filters; that’s part of why I’ve been off updating for so long. Updates will remain shaky because I’m still trying to both breathe and get to all my Thanksgiving stuff.) I don’t usually do plugs for any kind of money stuff but if you’re able, please consider donating to one of the charities assisting victings of the Camp Fire (and the Woolsey and Hill fires down south); the number of people who have lost both loved ones and livelihoods is terrible.
> 
> —
> 
> I had some other actual fic notes, after that interlude.
> 
> You know what I love about the Shadow Magic sorcerer subtree? Strength of the Grave, yall. Roll charisma to _refuse to die_. Also, another spot on the spell list sighted. :]
> 
> (Why did that fight go so few rounds? I hear you cry. The answer is because I’m not doing damage rolls and I’m not good at envisioning fight scenes, particularly 1v1s on fairly uninteresting terrain.)


	21. Through the Mountains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, it’s been a Time but I’ve got another bit done. I hope all of you who were in the wildfire areas are doing all right— I’m doing much better now that the air’s not poison (and I have a shiny new inhaler to deal with the lingering effects... yayyyy...) but work has been doing stuff, the holidays have been doing stuff, and everything happens so much so updates are... still slow. Alas.

Silence was enough, when Yasha found him earlier, silence and warmth and relief. But now that he hasn’t had to worry about being alone in several hours, Molly finds himself able to worry about other things. Like how Yasha’s apparently been alone ever since she was rescued, with only the voice of a god for company. It’s a miserable experience, that kind of isolation, he knows that he hates it now, and it hurts to know that’s what she’s had ever since... he died. He wants to ask if the Nein took care of her before she left. He wants her to let them. He also doesn’t want to bother her, and so he sits on it all for hours, occasionally asking about something entirely unimportant just to make noise. Silence isn’t enough anymore.

Finally he blurts it out. “What did you...” He shifts uncomfortably in the saddle. “Where did you go, after you got free? Why didn’t you stay with the others? You didn’t have to be alone.”

Yasha stays quiet for another moment, and when she speaks, her voice is leaden. “The storm called me.”

Molly’s tail’s started to lash, and it spooks the horse, and once he finishes calming it he’s accepted that he can’t ask for elaboration on that. He’s only ever asked her about that once, and never tried since. He can’t say he’s happy that the Stormlord would call her off with no chance at comfort, either. Unless... “Did you know you were going to find me?”

Yasha nods, and her wild mane of hair shifts with the motion. “It led away from— that place.” She can’t name it, even with Molly alive and talking to her. “But then it led back, and you weren’t there anymore. I knew I would find you, then.”

Molly’s fidgeting slows a little at that, though . “Sorry I was— gone for so long. I wandered pretty far.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted you to stay there.” She shakes her head. “Beau said... you saved her life. I. I don’t blame you for that, I just.” She reins her horse to a halt for a moment, and her shoulders hunch forward; she looks up at Molly when he draws even with her. The look in her eyes is heartbreaking. “Try a different way next time,” she says softly. “Don’t... leave again.”

“Oh, Yash...” Molly pulls his horse right up next to hers and tries to lean over to give her a hug. It works for a split second, and then he loses his balance and tumbles out of the saddle, and both the horses shy off in opposite reactions, and by the time Yasha has got her horse under control she has to laugh at the sight of Molly covered in grass stains and chasing his now permanently anxious horse across the field, trying not to swear too violently.

 

* * *

Molly stays quiet for a while after that but for the occasional pained mutter about damned idiot horses. Yasha’s usual quiet is more comfortable again, now.

But inevitably, though it’s easier to turn to lighter subjects, the questions bubble back up. “I’ve always wondered how you always know where you’re going,” he remarks as Yasha turns the dead highwayman’s horse around a hillside, the mountains looming ever larger ahead.

“I don’t,” she replies. “I mean. Not always. I do right now. Part of it’s the sun, or the stars at night. But mostly I just... know. The path always starts with a storm, and then once I’m going, even if the weather clears I can just... feel it? Like it’s always with me, until I get where I need to be. But I do know where we’re going,” she adds earnestly.

“Oh, I trust you on that.” Molly grins. “I was just curious. Never got to see you navigate like this before.”

“I don’t usually take people with me.”

“Well, yeah. Kind of what I meant.” He’s still not asking where she goes. But how she gets there is _sort of_ another question.

“I can’t take you with me all the way,” Yasha adds, troubled. “Not past Nicodranas. I have to... go.”

“I know. That’s okay. We’ll find the others, and surprise the shit out of them, and— and you’ll be back,” Molly concludes. Usually he’s pretty unbothered by Yasha’s vanishing, but now, after weeks on the road without anyone... well, he’s got her for the next few days, anyway. Time to change the subject. “Have you ever been to Nicodranas before? Or the sea?”

“Not the Menagerie Coast. I don’t... I don’t think it’s very much like the sea near Xhorhas.”

“Well, Jester made it sound pretty great.”

“Mhm.”

* * *

 

They continue on, the terrain growing more and more rugged, until finally the sun is gone and Molly’s too worn out to keep going— well, so is Yasha, even though she doesn’t realize she’s tired until Molly does. He sees it in the sag of her shoulders as she dismounts and seeks out a scrubby tree, and ties the horses to it. They putter around in companionable quiet as they set up camp. Molly’s run out of things to say again, which is how he knows _he’s_ really tired. There’s an alcove in the rock by it, a little shelter from the wind and visibility. Yasha sits down with her back to the stone, sword at her side as ever.

Molly knows an opportunity when he sees it. He puts his things down next to Yasha, then flops catlike across her lap with a sigh, still soaking up every bit of contact he can get. She gives a contented hum, and pats his shoulder, but just as he’s about to doze off, she speaks up.

“Molly.”

“Yeeeees?” He cracks an eye back open, looking up at Yasha. She’s got her Fond Exasperation face on, gods, he missed that face.

“I won’t do very much good on watch if you’re in my lap,” she says reasonably. “If something attacks us, I’ll have to move you before I can hit it.”

“Come on, you can lean on me when it’s my turn to watch.”

“I sleep lighter than you do, though.”

“I can’t argue with you there.” He scoots so that his head is only leaning on one of her legs, not weighing her down as much. “Is this better?”

“Not really.” She reaches down and musses his hair. “Here, you can sleep next to me. I promise I’m not going anywhere.”

Molly mutters and rearranges himself, resting his head on his coat and pressing his back up against Yasha’s thigh. He believes her, really, but there’s some lower level of his mind that can’t, that’s afraid he’ll just wake up alone again if he goes to sleep, like he’s done for weeks. The contact helps shut that part of his mind up. Yasha seems to understand. She keeps one hand on her sword, but fluffs his hair with the other, then takes his hand. It’s enough, and he finally drifts.

And then she’s gently shaking him awake from a sound, dreamless sleep, her watch shift up. Molly slowly picks himself up and leans his back against the rock Yasha’s leaning on, right next to her. She keeps her sword in her lap, but leans into him as he snakes his tail around her waist and an arm around her shoulders, and carefully rests her head against his shoulder. As her breathing slows evenly, he settles in to watch and wait.

When Yasha finds him asleep on her again in the morning, she can’t find it in herself to be annoyed. She simply nudges him awake, and the trek continues.

* * *

The next couple of days lead them up into the mountains, and for a little while the air chills again. They give up on watch shifts; Yasha is used to traveling alone with no watch anyway, and Molly’s content for the most part to rely on her danger sense. He shows her his new magic; she flicks pebbles at him until she’s satisfied that it will actually deflect things away from him. Then she sweeps him up in another bone-crushing hug, and again he holds tight and tries to convince her not to worry.

Yasha has no qualms about washing herself in a freezing mountain stream; Molly makes an attempt, curses a blue streak, then curls up by their campfire and sulks til he’s warm again. He practices the clothes-cleaning trick some more, and Yasha gives an impressed smile and then bonks him gently on the horn when he’s still going on about how great it is fifteen minutes later. He finally rememberes to give Yasha her letter from Kiri, and the small smile as she folds it up and tucks it into her book is well worth the weirdness of dealing with the kid again. They name the horses, then forget the names. They rename the horses. Molly manages to stop scaring his with every unexpected tail gesture, but only after falling on his ass a few more times.

One night finds them looking up at the stars. The air is crystal clear up here, and the moons are dark, so there are more stars visible than Molly’s ever seen.

“D’you know what that one is?” he asks, and points to a rough clump of stars. “Gustav taught me a few of the groupings, but, well, there’s a lot. Like that’s the Rose, and that’s the Dragon, but I don’t know a bunch of these.”

“I don’t think so. They call some of them differently in Xhorhas, though.”

“Maybe we should name ‘em.”

“I guess?”

“Yeah. That one’s definitely the Owlbear, look, there’s the legs and the beak. And that’s... gods, that one looks kind of like a dick.”

Yasha chuckles. “You’re missing Jester, aren’t you.”

Molly thwaps her in the shin with his tail. “Yeah, but that’s beside the point, look, it does!”

“...It kind of does. You should tell her when we find her.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

* * *

And then soon enough they’re going downhill again, into the warmer air on the other side of the mountains. The wind smells odd here, the grass is dotted with flowers he doesn’t recognize, and Molly has to marvel at the newness of it, even if he’s really starting to want a real bath and a real bed, magic laundry or no.

Yasha finds them a road again, and they eventually pass by a caravan going the other way. Molly stares at the covered wagons going by even as the caravan’s staff stare at him. He catches the glimpse of bars behind the canvas on one, enough to get his heart racing and his hand halfway through casting a shield— but then he sees a muzzle poke out of the cage, and behind it the eyes, bright but unknowing. It’s only an animal. All the same, he gladly follows suit when Yasha turns her horse wordlessly off the road to skirt it again for a while.

The breeze grows warmer, and the smell on it becomes even more unfamiliar. They pass no more caravans, leaving Molly to just watch the landscape go by. And then, as they come over another rise in the road, he sees it: a gleaming line of blue across the horizon. “Holy shit,” he says softly, and slows his horse so that he can sit and stare. All imaginings of lakes fall away: the sea stretches as far as he can see in either direction.

“We’re getting close,” Yasha says, drawing up even with him. “That’s it. That’s the ocean.”

“Are we gonna see it up close?”

“I guess we can—“ Yasha begins, but Molly’s already pushed his horse faster again with a delighted yell and veered off the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway, the new intro is amazing but also caused my entire soul to trip over a rock and do a header onto the sidewalk when they cut to the coat, so basically every time I listen to it I cry slightly and immediately need to work on this AU some a little more. Real convenient at work, let me tell you.
> 
> At this point I think most likely I’m going to bring this fic to a close after Molly’s reunion with the others in Nicodranas, probably in a few chapters (inevitable upcoming interludes not included)— but there will absolutely a follow up quest fic where they deal with some of this Backstory Shit I’ve been building towards, I’m not just gonna let that lie, it’s just that everything on the show keeps going completely bonkers and I have to keep reformulating what I want that quest fic to actually BE.


	22. Interlude: Sighting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life is hard, I have no update schedule, this fic is not dead.

There had been next to nothing in Zadash.

The woman paces the borrowed study furiously. Oh, Cree had been here; she’d lifted that much from the thoughts of one of the Raven Queen’s priests, an image of bright eyes and dark fur through a cracked door. But the priests didn’t know where their heretic was, or if she was even in the city anymore.

She’d set a couple of the Assembly’s investigating to the work of tracking her tabaxi down within the city. But on her own, she’s stuck with scrying for now, and Cree has always been frustratingly resistant. It’s been no better than her attempts at scrying on the graveyard clerics.

Though, she hasn’t much better to do now. She could try one of them again. She picks up one of the bits and bobs lined up along a shelf: a teacup. Then she focuses, and...

_A pale firbolg sits on the driver’s seat of a closed-sided cart, placidly driving the horses along a clear country road. A tiefling woman sits beside him, chattering animatedly. The wagon is spelled, no way to see inside. And the rolling hills ahead..._

The southern border. What was one of them doing down near the southern border? And what had he got, in that cart of his?

No matter. She has a lead. She’ll catch up at a distance, assess the situation. Then she’ll take the knowledge she needed.

She’s up in an instant, packing her things to leave. The investigators could contact her later; she’d reserved a sending stone for them. A resupply requisition, a new horse, and she can be there in an instant, a few hours’ trip behind to keep a safe distance. She begins to sweep the scrying targets into the bag—

—And sweeps the teacup off the shelf onto the floor as a sharp knock sounds at her door, and the knocker enters without waiting for an answer.

The man’s wan, pointed face and neat beard are familiar. And infuriating. “Leaving so soon?” he asks, the light tone cloaking several barbs.

“Ikithon.” She gives him a dismissive glance, then keeps packing, stepping briskly over the shattered cup. “I am. Is there something you wanted?”

“I suppose I wanted to know why you were here in the first place, _Mage_ , since you hadn’t bothered to give any reports.”

He uses the title like an insult, but she doesn’t care; she’d never needed the recognition of “Archmage.” She could have it if she wanted, but she doesn’t. She shakes her head. “You will know when I’ve made a full enough study to report. Until then, you don’t need to. I don’t do things in partial measures like your puppet soldiers.”

The dig at his proteges strikes a nerve; it always does. “You know my apprentices function better than anything you ever—“

“Please. You rewrite your charges a few pages at a time— a chapter if you’re lucky. I’m close to being able to rewrite the whole thing. And I’ll be closer if you stay out of my way.” She picks up her bag, now packed, and brushes past the Archmage into the hall. He glares after her, alone in the doorway of the study— now empty but for a few shards of teacup.

 

* * *

 

Caduceus shudders as a faint, peculiar sensation passes over him. “Huh. Not sure I like that,” he mutters to nobody in particular— maybe the horses, probably not Jester. But she hears him anyway.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably just a chill, I expect.”

“Oh, okay. Do you want to hold Nugget? He’s nice and warm!” Jester holds up the puppy, who squirms adorably.

“No, thank you. I’m fine now. And it’s easier to drive when I’m not holding a dog,” Caduceus demurs. And so he keeps driving, on and on down the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I have the circus kids seeing the ocean up close for the first time IN THE WORKS but first you get plot because I have finally finished ruminating on some of it FOR NOW. I keep refactoring some of the plot stuff because good lord does shit ever keep happening in the show. Oh boy.


	23. The Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LET THEM GO TO THE BEACH  
> Yeah, I got nothing about the update schedule. Life is complicated. I’m fine. Writing is slow. This story ain’t over.

By the time Yasha catches up, Molly’s found the beach, hitched his horse precariously to a piece of driftwood that probably won’t hold it, shrugged off his coat, and got one of his boots off. “What are you doing?” she asks as he works on the laces of the other one.

“People swim in it, right?” He grins back at her as he shucks off his shirt and drops it on top of the coat. “Come on, we gotta try.”

“I... suppose some of them do? If the current is not too strong,” Yasha replies uncertainly as Molly takes off various bits of jewelry and shoves them in his coat. “We should check—“

But Molly is already sprinting towards the water again, so she stares for a second, then takes off her boots, hitches her horse and hopes it stays still, and runs after him. He splashes out to where the water reaches his knees, pauses, then keeps going. “It’s fine!” he calls back, and turns around, water up to his waist. “All clear!”

At which point of course a wave smacks into him from behind, and he goes down. Yasha keeps running as he appears again a moment later, coughing and spluttering. “Absolutely disgusting,” he calls to Yasha, but his grin is still wide as when he’d started wading in. “This is ridiculous. It just— goes on forever. Holy shit.”

“I mean, there is another side, with land on it,” Yasha replies. She can't help but smile too, standing in the knee-deep shallows, the breeze stirring her hair. “But it is pretty amazing.”

“Can we just camp here, you think? Like, stay here and see how long it takes the others to turn up? They’re bound to—“ Molly cuts off with an extremely undignified, startled squawk. Yasha starts forward again in alarm, but as Molly scrambles further out of the water, continuing his incoherent protests, his tail whips round and flings a hank of seaweed back into the waves. “Yasha these plants are horrible and rude and they ambushed me,” he whines as Yasha begins to break into giggles. He delicately peels another knot of seaweed off one of his ankles. “I’ve changed my mind, we can’t stay, that was awful.” But he’s snickering too, now, pretense of unhappiness already lost, and straightens up and flings his arms wide. “It’s fantastic. You want to stay here another couple hours?”

“For a bit,” Yasha agrees. She can’t deny the beauty and awe of the sea, or how pleasant it is to stand in the shallows and watch her best friend at his finest, making a fool of himself over something new and enjoying every minute of it. “There’s, uh, probably more to see, and we can keep walking along the beach too. When it’s time to get moving, I mean.”

“Sounds good to me.” Molly runs a hand through his hair, then shakes it off as it comes away sticky with salt. “And then baths when we get to Nicodranas, I think.”

“Mhm.” As Molly splashes away again, Yasha looks around in a slow circle— from the wideness of the sea, to the long stretch of beach, to the horses and the dunes behind them. Grasses and unfamiliar flowers wave in the breeze, a little trampled where the horses came crashing through. _She would have loved this too,_ Yasha realizes. Her heart aches to see yet another new wonder without Zuala, and all the more with the knowledge that if not for an incredible turn of fate, she’d be seeing it alone.

But she’s not, and Molly is yelling something she half-understands, and the waves are gentle and the sun is warm. Yasha lets herself have that much, then, and in a while when she and Molly meander down the beach towards the city, stopping every so often to remark on strange birds and shells, they detour up into the dunes for a bit and come away with Yasha’s flower book a little fuller and smelling of the salt air.

* * *

They come to the city gates late in the afternoon, with plenty of time before closing. By now Molly is well and truly ready for a bath, and while he can’t resist darting off in a few random directions to take in the sights, he winds up eagerly flipping a passerby a coin in exchange for some directions in fairly short order. Then he has to try some of the street food after days of rations, and he and Yasha wind up with some kind of spicy shellfish soup. It’s delicious, and Molly tears enthusiastically into the bread bowl it came in, making sure he doesn’t miss any.

“Where do you think the Mighty Nein are?” he asks finally, the last chunk of bread still stuffed into one cheek. “You think they would have gone looking for Jester’s mother, or something?”

“I think they probably will,” Yasha replies. “But we took a, uh, more direct route, I think, so I don’t know if they’re here yet at all. Also Jester may still be in trouble, so probably they can’t actually stay with her mom. We should try some taverns, maybe.”

“That’s right, isn’t it,” Molly muses. “So we shouldn’t include her in the description. We can go asking about a half-orc, and a scruffy ginger, and a tough idiot in blue,” he smirks at Yasha’s tiny huff of laughter, “and a couple of unspecified others, and that ought to do it, I guess.” He licks a couple drops of soup off his fingers, wipes his hands off on his pants, then snaps his fingers and leaves the fabric clean. Gods, he really does kind of love that spell. “Shall we?”

They search on through the evening, going from inn to inn until finally the light has faded enough that the streets are mostly empty. Molly can’t help but feel the urgency building, even though he knows the Nein might not even be here yet, but he’s making a slightly better try than usual at keeping calm. Probably because Yasha’s there over his shoulder at every turn, he thinks.

He asking at yet another inn, some run-of-the-mill place called the Drunken Corby, when she cuts in. “If you haven’t seen them, we’ll keep looking later,” she says. “But also we would like to know how much your rooms are. It’s getting late.”

“Three gold for a room,” the halfling innkeeper says, craning his neck to look up at her. “Together or separate?”

Molly’s tail twitches in agitation. “Come on, Yasha, we can check a couple more—“

He feels her hand come down on his shoulder. “We’ll share,” she says. “I’m tired. You’re tired. If we keep looking now, you’re just going to get more upset that we haven’t found them.”

Molly deflates a bit, and fishes for his money as the innkeeper pulls a key off a ring. “Chin up, hey?” the halfling says. “She’s right. Plenty of time to look tomorrow, and I’ll let you know if I see ‘em.”

Yasha squeezes Molly’s shoulder and reaches past him to take the key as he counts out the coin onto the desk, and that’s that. He follows her dejectedly off to the room.

Whether by assumption on the innkeeper’s part or simple limitations of space, the room has only a single bed, just barely long enough for Yasha if she goes on a bit of a diagonal. "I can take the floor," she offers.

Molly shakes his head, already beginning to pace the room. "Neither of us need to take the floor after the trip we've had. Besides, you'll probably need to sit on me if you want me to stop looking for the night."

Yasha slings a comforting arm around his shoulders for a moment, then goes to put her things down. Molly gives up and follows suit, going listlessly through his prayers, unsure of whether they're being received properly. Sure, he’s exceedingly convinced that the Moonweaver’s there, now. But is She listening, or approving of where he’s going? Has he been using his third chance right? Will She lead him back to his other friends, or...?

He shakes his head, and the jingling reminds him to take off his jewelry for the night, too. Yasha’s stretched out like a log, now, sword propped against the wall and angled so she can see the door. Molly flops down beside her, then rolls closer. She wraps an arm around him, protective.

He curls closer to her. “You think we’ll find ‘em tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. But it’s out of our hands for now,” Yasha says. “

“I bet they’re not here yet. If they were here, they’d have caused enough of a stir that everyone would have heard of them by now.”

“Mhm.”

“And they’re fine, they’re just road tripping it from Zadash.”

“Yes.”

“And they would have put paid to any trouble along the way, probably.”

Yasha sighs. “I think they’re... almost definitely okay. And will be here soon. But Molly, you need to go to sleep. I mean, if you’re all exhausted tomorrow, it will be hard to properly celebrate when you find them, right?”

Molly grins weakly. “Has that ever stopped me before?” But he tries to let that be the end of it, for now. Tries not to give way to the deep-down fear that something’s happened and he’ll never see them again. Yasha must have it too, he realizes, they each lost each other in turn, until...

His thoughts slowly spiral further and further out, thinking of consequences, thinking of expectations, thinking of how he still doesn’t understand why he’s back. Before, he’d shove that train of thought away, run from it, maybe find some interesting substance or person to chase it off. But there’s less wondering about the other guy now, more wondering about god shit, and anyway Yasha’s probably fallen asleep on him and he can’t go anywhere. He tries to just focus on the fact that she’s here, because that’s genuinely great.

Finally he can’t really take it anymore, and nudges her. “Hey, Yasha?”

Yasha shifts a little, as though she’s trying to look at Molly where he’s tucked himself under her chin. Not asleep yet, then. “Yes?”

“When the Stormlord— okay, you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want, or talk about the circumstances or anything, but when the Stormlord saved you, how did you know what to do to serve Him afterward?”

There’s a pause. “He told me,” she says simply.

“Like in dreams, or visions, or something?”

He feels her nod, her chin digging in briefly between his horns. “Kind of. Have you had... dreams or visions or something? After you woke up?”

Molly sighs heavily. “No. And I don’t know if the gods want anything from me, and I don’t like it. I mean— I’m really very grateful to be alive, of course, but—“

Yasha gives him a squeeze. “I think I get what you mean. But you know, if there was something they wanted from you, I don’t think they could really expect you to do it unless they told you what it was. So I think you’re probably okay.”

“Life used to be so simple,” he grumbles into her collarbone.

“I don’t think it really was, though.”

“It used to be so much easier to act like life was simple.”

Yasha sighs again, but when she speaks Molly can hear the faint smile in her voice. "If you say so. Go to sleep, Molly. I’ve got you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy I can’t wait to reunite these fuckers.  
> I’m not sure what I’m going to do after that, though. I’ve been building Plot in the background, but I’m at a bit of a loss for what to do with it at the moment, basically having run out of track as far as things I actually planned goes. I think what’s going to happen is this fic is going to last another couple chapters, and then once I’ve marked it complete, I’m going to do a full edit of it. Second draft, and all. And then once I’ve figured out the plot going forward, I’ll start that as a second work in the series— still a continuation of the same story, just portioning things off. We’ll see how it goes.

**Author's Note:**

> I have shoved a whole bunch of the magic system down my brain and promptly decided to skate back and forth all over the lines of how the system says things can work to my heart's content, don't @ me.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at nerdlordholocron.


End file.
